Reverberations
by Zubeneschamali
Summary: When a killer that Don has been chasing for over a decade shows up in Los Angeles, the case gets a lot more complicated -- and a lot more personal. Set after Season Four.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Reverberations  
Author: Zubeneschamali  
Rating: T (language, violence)  
Summary: When a killer that Don has been chasing for over a decade shows up in Los Angeles, the case gets a lot more complicated -- and a lot more personal. Set after Season Four.

Author's Note: I've taken some liberties with Don's professional history, but as far as I know, I haven't contradicted canon. It's told half in the present day and half in flashbacks, with timestamps to keep things straight.

Acknowledgments: Thanks as always to Lady Shelley for maintaining "Running the NUMB3RS." I'm grateful to the contributors at Wikipedia and the Washington Post who did the research so I didn't have to. And many thanks to Susan W., ritt, and Kiki for their magnificent beta reading, including characterization corrections and plot-hole patching.

Disclaimer: As if.

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Prologue  
July 30, 2008

It was only the tiniest moment's distraction. Only the sound of a tree branch banging on the roof in the wind. It wouldn't have mattered if Don wasn't here on his own. It shouldn't have been enough of an opportunity for a man with one handcuff already closed over his wrist. But then, not everyone was as quick on their feet as Shaun Gillis. Or as desperate.

Don had his gun trained on the killer's back while he closed the cuff over his left wrist. At the sudden crashing noise outside, his head twitched sideways. He relaxed when he heard the wind whistling outside and the second thump of the branch.

But by then, it was too late.

The darkness outside had turned the window opposite them into a mirror. Gillis had noticed Don's head turning, and, in that instant, made his move. He twisted to his right as he rose, his unencumbered hand grabbing Don's gun and pushing it away. In the same move, he used his momentum to pull his left arm free and swing it around, the empty handcuff landing solidly against Don's temple simultaneously with the fist connecting with his jaw.

Don staggered sideways under the dual blow. His weight was still precariously balanced when Gillis completed his turn, his knee coming up sharply into Don's ribs. The knee plus a strong shove sent him crashing to the ground, landing on his back with a thump that took the air out of his lungs.

He shook his head, desperately trying to clear it from its sudden throbbing. He had just raised himself up onto one elbow when he realized how fatal his distraction was going to be.

Because in the vain attempt to break his fall, he'd dropped his weapon. And now standing over him was the wanted killer he was supposed to be arresting, pointing Don's own gun at him from not two feet away.

There was no sound for a few seconds but the panting breaths of the two combatants. "What are you waiting for?" Don finally growled. He had no illusions about what was going to happen next. He knew Gillis had probably been imagining this moment for years: the FBI agent who had tracked him across the country for over a decade was now at his mercy.

"I'm savoring the moment, Agent Eppes." Gillis's cold green eyes crinkled a little at the corners. "Like you were doing a few seconds ago. Talk about turning the tables."

Don swallowed, refusing to let any of his fear creep into his expression. Mentally, he started casting around for anything that he could use as a diversion, anything he could distract Gillis with for a split second while he pulled the backup piece out of his ankle holster. Coming up with nothing, he concentrated on looking out of the corners of his eyes without taking his gaze off the gunman, still searching for something he could throw or reach for or do anything with that might serve the same distracting function as that damn tree had.

Gillis gave that same low chuckle Don had first heard over a decade ago. "Still searching for a way out, aren't you, rookie? But I still know what I'm doing far better than you. And I know that you're out of options."

He was right. David and Colby were at least ten minutes away. There was plenty of time for Gillis to pull the trigger and then disappear into the night with one more kill completed.

"I've been waiting a long time for this," the other man said almost conversationally. He centered his aim between his target's eyes and went on, "I would have killed you the first time I had the chance if I'd known what a pain in the ass you were going to be."

Instead of replying, Don looked sharply to his right as if he had just heard something. Without turning his head, he looked to his left to see Gillis taking two cautious steps backwards before looking off in the same direction, putting himself well out of range as he did so. Don measured the distance, but quickly realized that even a sudden lunge or grab for his second weapon wouldn't get him anywhere before the other man pulled the trigger.

At this point, it didn't look like there was anything he could do before that happened.

Gillis looked back at him. "Nice try, Agent."

And suddenly Don's mouth went dry. He really _was _out of options. The professional killer wasn't about to allow himself to be distracted by anything he could throw at him, even something as stupid as the sound of a tree branch on the roof. The weight of the .22 at his ankle was a mocking reminder of his failure to do anything useful with his own weapon, almost like the first time he'd encountered this man. God, what a damn rookie mistake he'd made!

Unlike his early errors in judgment, the cost here was going to be much higher.

As he stared up into the barrel of his own gun, watching Gillis's finger on the trigger, his heart pounding faster and faster, he realized with overwhelming dread that it was a mistake that was going to cost him his life.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the reviews, everyone. It's good to be back. :)

Disclaimer and thanks are in the prologue.

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Chapter 1  
July 9, 2008 (three weeks earlier)  
FBI Field Office, Los Angeles

"Hey, David, what's the word on the Nicholson case?" Don called over his shoulder.

"Almost wrapped up, Don. A couple more forms to fill out and we can file it away."

He shifted the coffee stirrer in his mouth. "Okay, sounds good. Liz dump that on you?"

"We, uh, had a bet of sorts. I guess you could say I lost." David didn't look up from the paperwork he was filling out, his voice indicating that he didn't want to go into further detail.

On another occasion, Don would have teased and pried until he got an answer out of the younger man, but they were all stretched a little too tight right now. The Nicholson kidnapping represented their first successful case as a newly-constituted team of four, Liz rounding out the group since Megan's departure. He would like to think it hadn't taken them any longer than it would have if Charlie was around, but he couldn't be sure of that.

He sucked a little on the coffee stirrer and turned back to his own workstation. They had only two active cases right now: either good fortune or an indication that the powers that be were still wary of assigning too much responsibility to a team tainted by association with someone accused of passing information to enemy agents. He let out a sigh and took the white plastic out of his mouth, dropping it in the trash before taking a gulp of coffee.

"Hey, Don, you got a minute?" It was Colby, approaching from the far end of the bullpen.

He rotated in his chair. "Yeah, what is it?"

Colby dropped into the chair at Liz's desk, a manila folder in his hands. "This just came in from upstairs; they wanted you to take a look because your name's on it."

He frowned and reached for the folder. "How so?"

"Looks like you were the agent in charge a long, long time ago."

Apparently Colby didn't have the same qualms about giving a verbal elbow to the ribs. Don shot him a mock glare as he plucked the folder from his hand. "I haven't exactly been an agent for a 'long, long time', much less agent in charge."

But then he opened the folder. And drew in a sharp breath that instantly caught the attention of both of his teammates.

"What is it?" David asked, turning around at his desk.

Don looked at the pencil sketch clipped to the top sheet. "Shaun Gillis," he said quietly. "Man, that's a name from the past."

Colby nodded at the folder. "Says you were in charge from the mid-nineties. That was right when you started with the FBI, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," he answered almost absentmindedly. That was, what, twelve -- no, thirteen years ago. He shook his head. It still stuck out in his mind like it was yesterday.

"Colby, I've got more on the Long Beach shooting." Liz was walking up to them with a few sheets of paper in her hand.

"What shooting?" Don looked up at her, confused.

She nodded at the folder. "An Anton Levski was found dead near the port early this morning. Fingerprints on the scene match this Gillis guy."

Don instantly tensed. "Single shot to the forehead? A .22?"

Liz looked down at the papers she held. "Yes on the first, unknown on the second."

"Damn." He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching at the day's worth of stubble along his jaw. "He's here. He's right _here_, in L.A." He started mentally rearranging their workload: the two open cases had already waited a week while they restored a six-year-old to his parents; they could wait another few days.

Liz had crossed her arms across her chest and was looking pointedly at Colby. He gave a sheepish grin and rose from her seat, only to perch on the edge of her desk as she sat down. "How well do you know this guy, Don?" he asked.

"Well enough to know that if we don't move fast, we're not going to get him." He flipped quickly through the folder, looking for a key piece of information. "Here we go." He handed the sheet to Colby along with a copy of the sketch. "He's got a couple of aliases. Check the airport, trains, car rental agencies, everything. Fax this picture around and let them know he's armed and extremely dangerous. They should _not_ try to stop him from leaving, but notify us right away."

"Got it." Colby hopped off the desk and headed for his own workspace, suddenly all business.

"Liz, I'm going to need everything there is on the victim. Levski, you said?" When she nodded, he went on, "Age, address, employment, anything that might explain why a professional killer would be after him."

"A .22 seems an odd choice for a contract killer," David put in. "It's not exactly the most powerful kind of ammo."

"No, but it makes it more of a challenge for him; he has to get close enough that accuracy and firepower aren't an issue. Trust me, he's that good," Don replied.

"Give me a break," Liz responded. "If he was that good, he wouldn't be leaving fingerprints." It was funny that now that Liz was working with them again, she was noticeably less deferential than she had been when they were involved. He hadn't decided yet if he liked that or not.

He shook his head. "It's kind of like rubbing our faces in it. This guy has gotten away too many times and he's full of himself because of it. I think it's like a signature or a calling card at this point, showing how good he is that he can leave evidence and we still can't track him down." _Megan could confirm that_, he added in his head, but he didn't need to say it out loud. His teammates were all painfully aware that there was a hole in their midst right now and pointing it out wasn't going to help matters. Getting another behaviorist in would help, but he didn't have time for that right now. Not while he was closer than he'd been in years to nailing this bastard.

"You've been after him a long time?" David asked.

"A damn long time," he replied. He stared at the sketch in the file for a moment, seeing not a pencil drawing but a narrow alleyway and a terrified young agent encountering a professional killer for the first time. Then he realized he was holding his breath. He let out a deep sigh and deliberately looked away.

Funny how quickly old emotions could be stirred up after all these years.

"When did you take on the case?" Liz was typing briskly on her keyboard, but she could still multitask.

"Really early on. 'Course, it wasn't much of a case then. Only three murders." He flipped through the file again, looking more closely. Now there were seven deaths, besides this morning's victim, that matched Gillis's weapon and fingerprints. The latest was in 2006. He tried to remember the sequence of events, the last time he'd seen this man face to face. "Thing is, I almost had him in Minneapolis. I guess it put the fear of God into him and he started being more careful." He looked up for a moment as a thought struck him. "How'd this end up coming back to me, anyway?"

"Ask him." Liz jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Colby, who was busy making phone calls.

He briefly looked over at the sandy-haired agent. Not that it really mattered, anyway. He'd been given a chance here to fix a mistake he'd made years ago, one that had apparently cost the lives of four people in the interim. No, scratch that -- five. He sighed. Well, one thing was for sure: he wasn't going to screw it up this time. Shaun Gillis was going to be in custody before the week was out if he had anything to say about it.

"David, finish that up later," he said, rising from his seat and draining the last of his coffee. "We're going to Long Beach."

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July 29, 1995  
(thirteen years earlier)  
East Boston, MA

"Whaddya got, Eppes?"

Don looked up at the short, heavyset man entering the garage. "Agent Boswell. It's, uh, one shot to the forehead. Looks professional."

"And what makes you say that?" Pat Boswell came forward and stood next to him, looking down at the dead man sprawled on the cement floor.

"Well, it's a clean shot. No obvious signs of a struggle, so it was probably quick. The victim, um, Mr. Carlos Depina, works here at the body shop, and according to the records in the office here, he would have been alone last night."

"Is there a time of death?"

Don flipped back through his notes. "The coroner's initial estimate was 11 P.M., but they'll have more details once they do the autopsy."

Boswell grunted. "You see anything missing, Eppes?"

_Just the weapon and the suspect_, he wanted to say, but kept his wisecracks to himself. No sense ticking off his boss and partner after only a few weeks on the job. "I'm not sure I know what you mean, sir."

"This is a body shop. So what was he working on? Where's the cah?"

Don almost asked, "The what?" but caught himself. His supervisor's strong Boston accent kept throwing him for a loop. They talked like perfectly normal people here, except for when the letter R simply disappeared from their words. "I don't know. Maybe he was cleaning up last night."

"Anything else?"

"Actually, yes, there is. I, uh, was looking over some of those old case files that you put on my desk and something here reminds me of one of them."

"Eppes, I gave you those to file away, not to spend hours working on. Most of them are pretty cold."

"Well, okay, but there was this one from Hartford, two years ago. Single shot to the forehead, just like this."

"Guys get shot in the forehead all the time." The word came out more like "foah-head," but the context made it easier to understand.

"I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, but there were some notes in the Hartford file that indicated you had already made a connection to an unsolved case in Baltimore. I wasn't sure why, since the victims had nothing in common, but the MO was the same. And it's the same as this one."

"Yeah, I remember that case. Found out later he owed a whole bucketload of money to some guys at Pimlico and figured they'd had enough of his stalling. Big black guy, shot outside his downtown condo. A buddy of mine sent it up here when he heard about the one in Hahtford, thought it might be related."

"Well, then, that's one commonality in the victims," Don said, looking down at the dark-skinned man who lay dead on the floor.

"Not really. This guy's Cape Verdean, not African-American." At Don's puzzled look, he went on, "Little bunch of islands off the coast of Africa. They used to work on the whaling ships back in Colonial times. There's still a big immigrant community today, including the gangs from home."

"So you think that's what this is? Gang violence?" East Boston was known to have a few rough spots, but the neat bullet hole in Depina's forehead didn't fit that pattern.

"No, I agree with you. It's a professional hit. I even agree there might be a connection to the other two. But you're going to have to do some digging to prove it."

Don nodded absentmindedly, nibbling on his lower lip as he tried to remember the details of the other two cases. There had been a suspect in Hartford, but a round of questioning hadn't yielded anything useful. Maybe if he went back and looked up that guy, he could trace him here to Boston. And if he looked over the files more closely, it would help him to know what to look for on this case.

_If_ they were related. He didn't know why he felt so strongly that they were, but it was a good hunch. And he'd learned in his training at Quantico that his hunches were right more often than not. More often than anyone else's except --

He cut off that train of thought before it could go any farther. No use dwelling on what was past. "The medical examiner's office said they're ready when we are. I'd like to get back to the office and start looking at those files, if you don't mind."

Boswell regarded him for a moment, then shook his head. "Ah, the energy of youth." He clapped a hand to Don's shoulder. "I'll see you back at the office, Eppes."

Don nodded and left the garage, blinking as he came out into the sunlight. He fumbled in his pocket for his sunglasses, then realized he'd left them in his apartment. He'd gotten out of the habit of carrying them everywhere once he realized they weren't as necessary on the East Coast as in Los Angeles. Now that another cold, grey winter was past, he'd have to get back into the habit.

He climbed into his Corolla and paused, keys in the ignition. If this guy was from Cape Verde and was part of the immigrant community, how did he attract an enemy rich enough to hire a professional killer? What had he done to earn that kind of attention? Inter-gang violence often traveled across the ocean with migrants, but it usually stayed within the community. There was something strange about this case.

His mouth was set in a determined line. This was the kind of puzzle he had joined the FBI to solve. He was going to figure out who had killed Carlos Delpina and get him off the streets. And with any luck, he'd have it solved before the week was out.

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So, whaddya think of Rookie!Don? Go ahead and hit that review button...


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer and thanks are in the Prologue.

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Chapter 2  
July 14, 2008  
Eppes residence

"Hey, anybody home?" Don pushed the door of the Craftsman open and stuck his head inside.

A faint "yeah" came from the vicinity of the kitchen. Don let himself in and wended his way to the back of the house, following his nose as he went.

Charlie was stirring a large pot on the stove and held out a wooden spoon as Don entered the room. "What do you think?"

"Chili? In July?" He carefully blew on the spoonful and then tasted it. "Mmm, not bad. Needs more cumin, though."

"You always think it needs more cumin."

"Chili can never have too much cumin." Don opened the refrigerator and took a bottle out of the door. After twisting the cap off, he took a long drink and settled back against the counter, his jaw cracking open with a yawn.

"You really should buy some of that yourself and keep it here instead of always drinking Dad's beer." Charlie carefully measured out a teaspoon of cumin and dropped it in the pot.

He shrugged. "I'll buy the next time we go out."

Charlie reached for the cinnamon, fumbling with the set of measuring spoons to find the smallest one. "How's the case going?"

"What case?" Don looked sharply at his brother. Relations between them might have eased enough that he was coming over for dinner again, but they sure weren't going to start discussing work. Not if he could help it.

"The one that's been keeping you up." Charlie cast him a quick glance and went on, "You look like you haven't slept in a week."

"That bad, huh?"

The wooden spoon started stirring again. "That...and the beer is the first thing you went for. That means a tough case. Otherwise you'd be trying to sneak a spoonful of whatever's on the stove."

He sighed. It was simultaneously reassuring and annoying to know that someone could read him as well as his family could. "Just hitting a brick wall. Again." He pushed himself away from the kitchen counter and plopped down into a chair at the table.

"Can you talk about it?"

Don fidgeted with the edge of the placemat. He didn't want to talk about it, least of all with Charlie. He didn't want to watch the wheels start turning in his brother's head, then watch him actively shut down as he remembered he wasn't allowed to be helping. "I don't know, Chuck," he said. "I don't think we should get into it."

"Have you talked to Robin about it?"

His brow furrowed. "No, not really. She's been really busy with that racketeering trial and this has been taking up pretty much all of my time, so…."

Silence fell again. Charlie gave the pot an enthusiastic stir, a bit of chili slopping over the sides. "How about Dad?"

He let out a snort. "You kidding? I don't want him worrying about me tangling with this guy again."

"What does that mean?" There was faint alarm on Charlie's face as he turned towards him.

"Forget it," he said, waving a hand as he took a swig of beer.

Charlie carefully put the wooden utensil in the spoon rest before turning all the way around. "See, Don, the thing is…" He paused. "I might not be able to help you in the office right now. But I can still help."

He shook his head grimly. "You can't work on any of my cases." _You made that bed, now you're stuck lying in it_.

"That's not what I mean. Look, contrary to popular belief, I _am_ capable of listening to someone else talk without immediately writing equations on a chalkboard. If you need to clear your head or think out loud, I promise I won't try to suggest any solutions. Sometimes it helps to talk it out." He picked up the spoon again. "I'll just, uh, concentrate on the chili."

Don blinked and looked at the curly head bent over the stove. He'd gotten so reliant on his brother's mathematical capabilities that he'd forgotten about some of the other things he was good at. And he slowly realized that Charlie might need to listen as much as he needed to talk. His brother might have chosen to defy the federal government, but he hadn't necessarily thought out all of the implications. And right now he was hurting, too.

Aloud, he said, "Well, it's been in the papers, so I guess I can talk about it a little."

Charlie looked over his shoulder. "The hit man? The Russian immigrant who was killed?"

"That's right." He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to wake up a little. Maybe he should have gone for coffee instead of beer.

"So do you know who did it?"

Don leaned back in the chair, tapping his thumb against the bottle. "His name is Shaun Gillis. He's been wanted for murder-for-hire for over ten years and we've never managed to catch him. _I've_ never managed to catch him."

"You've been after him for ten years?"

"Thirteen, off and on. I first ran into him in Boston and he's been a thorn in my side ever since."

"That must have been one of your first cases, right?" Charlie reached down and started pulling bowls out of the dishwasher.

"The first one I ran lead on, yeah. He also holds the distinction of being the first person ever to hold me at gunpoint." He took a swig from the bottle. "Damn, I want to catch this guy!"

"The _first_ person…" Charlie's voice was carefully neutral.

Don's eyes flickered towards his brother. "I was a rookie. It had to happen sometime."

"Don't say that, Don. Nothing _has_ to happen. Not when it involves people pointing guns at you."

He looked over to see Charlie's knuckles white around the handle of the wooden spoon. "Hey, come on. You know I got good people watching my back. Hell, I'm pretty good myself, you know."

He was rewarded with a quick, if small, smile. "They said in the paper that you guys don't think he's left Los Angeles yet."

Don heard the unspoken question. "That doesn't mean I'm in any danger."

"Does he know you're the one who's leading the case?" Charlie's serious brown eyes bored into his.

"I'm sure he does. He's known ever since Boston." _I made sure of that_, he thought, the corner of his mouth turning upwards as he remembered the challenge his naïve earlier self had made to a man he was still chasing, thirteen years later. What an empty challenge _that_ had turned out to be.

"How dangerous is he?"

"Well, he always seems to hit whatever he aims at."

Charlie turned off the burner and gave the pot a final stir. "And what, or whom, does he aim at?"

"That's the thing." Don drained the bottle and set it down on the table with a thump. "There's very little in the way of commonalities between his targets. Like this Russian guy: turns out he had ties to the Mafia back home in Novgorod. But the first case, the one that brought me in, had just come over on the boat from Cape Verde."

"But they were both immigrants." When he nodded, Charlie went on, "Was the Cape Verdean victim involved in any kind of a gang?"

"Yeah, but it was a local organization. Charlie, I've looked over the victims' files a dozen times. There's no connection between a gang from Africa and the Russian mafia. Much less the African-American kid in Chicago or the Puerto Rican guy in New York."

"But you're sure they're all the same killer?"

He opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. "We can't do this," he said quietly.

Charlie ladled chili into two bowls and brought them over to the table. "You're thinking out loud, Don. That's all it is. I've listened to Larry work out stuff about subatomic particles when I had no clue what he was talking about. I can pretend it's the same thing here."

"But you can't." Don dipped a spoon into the steaming bowl and looked across the table at his brother, sitting down in the chair across from him. "_I_ can't do that. I'm not talking in…in physics or some other kind of foreign language here. You're not authorized to hear about this case. That's it. End of story."

Charlie's head lifted and Don could see the full-blown puppy-dog expression coming to bear. He frowned. That was _so_ not going to work. "Look, Charlie, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I kind of need to watch what I say right now." He stirred the chili with his spoon, trying to think of a delicate way to phrase it. "Your, uh, standing up for truth, justice, and the American way means that anyone related to you is under a little cloud of suspicion right now."

"You're in trouble at work?" Charlie's eyes widened.

_Yeah, genius_, was the retort that sprang to his mind, but he couldn't say that out loud. It smacked too much of high school insults thrown by him and by his friends. He'd sworn a couple of years ago never to insult Charlie for his brains again -- at least not unless he was clearly teasing. So instead he said, "Not in trouble, just on the unofficial watch list. You know."

"Oh." Charlie toyed with his spoon for a moment, then pushed his bowl away. "I'm sorry."

Don shrugged one shoulder and took a spoonful of chili. "Not much you can do about it now."

There was silence for a moment. Then Charlie said hesitantly, "Amita's security clearance hasn't been affected, has it?"

"Not that I know of." He narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

Charlie put his hands on the table, fingers spread. "I don't want to sound like I'm giving her my permission or something, because she can make her own decisions. So can you. But if you need a mathematical consultant, she might be willing to help you out."

"And I suppose you'd be 'listening' to her 'talk out loud' about the case?" He made air quotes with his fingers as he spoke. "Give me a break."

Charlie shook his head. "I'm sure the FBI would want her to do all of her work in your office and not take any of it home. That's probably for the best, anyway."

He bit his lip and considered what Charlie was saying. The thought had crossed his mind once or twice, but he wasn't sure about the ethics of it, much less the legality. There might be a way to make it work, though, and even if Amita's brilliance didn't quite match up to Charlie's, she'd still come through for them on more than one occasion. "D'you think I could call her and ask?"

"Yeah, I think you could." Charlie's voice was subdued, but he sounded like he approved of the idea.

He gestured at the untouched bowl in front of his brother. "C'mon, eat your chili. It's pretty good."

"Yeah?" Charlie picked up his spoon and perked up a little. "You think so?"

"Yeah, it's not bad. But it's got a little too much cumin, I think." He looked up slyly and then pretended to duck as Charlie faked flinging a spoonful at him.

And for just a moment, he forgot all about Shaun Gillis.

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	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer and thanks are in the prologue.

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August 16, 1995  
Brookline Avenue, Boston

"This is Agent Whitburn. I have the target in sight." Don adjusted his earpiece to hear his fellow agent more closely. "Repeat, target is in sight. He's in the ballpark, seated about five rows behind third base."

Ballistics had matched the gun from East Boston to one used in both the Baltimore and Hartford shootings, and a partial print on the body shop door gave them a name: Shaun Gillis. Don's dogged work over the last three weeks had resulted in the missing car from the body shop being found in a commuter rail station well outside the city. The only piece of evidence in the car had been a receipt wedged between the seats, for a ticket to the Red Sox vs. the Yankees on August 16.

So now a full FBI team was waiting in and around Fenway Park. Pat Boswell had told Don that normally he wouldn't let someone so new be part of a major field operation like this, but Don had done good work and he deserved to be part of it. Don straightened his back and adjusted his earpiece again, determined not to let down the boss who was rapidly becoming a mentor to him.

"Five rows back? Lucky bastahd," came Boswell's accented voice. "I've never gotten seats that good at Fenway. All right, everyone, look shahp. It's the bottom of the eighth inning and we've got to keep our eye on our man when he moves."

"Roger," Don replied, amid the echo of half a dozen other voices saying the same thing. From his spot a few blocks from the ballpark, he could see a TV in the sports bar across the street. The top of the ninth inning extended a little bit longer than Red Sox fans would have liked, with the Yankees getting a run and threatening to tie. Don crossed his fingers, knowing he wouldn't dare crow too loudly at the office if his team managed to pull it off. But it was over with a quick double play, and jubilant fans started streaming out of Fenway Park on their way to the neighborhood bars, subway stations, and parking lots. The side street Don was waiting on had been temporarily closed to traffic to handle the efflux of people from the stadium. Now it was filled with a mass of people cheering their team and taunting any visiting fans unfortunate enough to be wearing New York paraphernalia.

"This is Whitmore. Gillis has left his seat and is heading towards the exit. Harris, I think he'll be coming out onto Yawkey Way to the west."

"Understood. I'll keep an eye out."

Don tracked the fugitive's progress through the various voices in his ear, waiting as he came closer and closer. Then the team's sole female agent spoke up. "All right, I have him on the Turnpike bridge. Eppes, he's headed your way."

The Massachusetts Turnpike cut through the city almost immediately next to the ballpark, the street Don was waiting on rising over the interstate on an overpass. He started scanning the crowd more intently, at the same time casually patting his side to make sure his weapon was at hand if necessary. "This is Eppes. Remind me again what he's wearing."

"Red jacket, navy cap," came Whitmore's response. "Unless he's changed."

"No, that's it," Kathy Adams replied. "Eppes, do you see him?"

His gaze flashed from one red jacket to the next, alighting for a moment on each one and being disappointed every time. He closed his eyes for a moment, picturing the DMV photograph they'd been shown in the briefing. Average height, green eyes, small, pinched features.

When he opened his eyes, there he was.

"Roger. Target is coming off the bridge and continuing north on Brookline." Don leaned forward, again absentmindedly checking for his weapon. His eyes never left the suspect, who was strolling along as nonchalantly as could be. He looked like any other baseball fan in the crowd. Could he really be the man who'd committed three murders across three states?

He kept his eyes locked on Gillis's figure until it became apparent that he would be coming within only a few feet of him. Don tore his gaze away and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, trying to look like he was waiting for a friend who'd gotten lost in the crowd. After he was sure his quarry had passed, he waited a few beats before turning and joining the throng heading down the street.

Four heads in front of him was a navy baseball cap and a red jacket. He matched his pace to the people walking around him, not wanting to get too close, but wanting to keep the target in sight. The side street they were on was approaching a major intersection with Beacon Street and the broad boulevard of Commonwealth Avenue. The crowd was slowing down as the six-way intersection forced them onto sidewalks and crosswalks. The distances between people were narrowing and the pace slowed from a walk to a shuffle. Don felt someone poke him in the back.

_Come on, it's not like I can move any faster here_, he mentally grumbled_._

When whatever was poking him stayed put, he was about to turn around and give someone a piece of his mind. Then a hand clamped down on his upper arm and started pulling him towards an alley off to the side.

Then he understood -- and a chill of fear ran down his spine.

They made their way to the edge of the crowd and into the alley, the gun pressing into Don's back the entire time. The crowd never noticed a thing.

There were two dumpsters halfway down the alley, and Don was marched in between them. His arm was lifted so that his hand was resting against the wall. He raised his other arm without being asked. His gun disappeared from its holster and he felt his badge and handcuffs being removed as well.

Then there was a pause.

Don stared at the brick wall inches in front of his face, clenching his jaw as he waited in horrible anticipation. The man behind him had killed three people that he knew of over the past few months and had shown remarkable efficiency in eliminating him as a threat. He wondered if he could manage to get a few words out to warn the rest of the team before it was too late. He tried to swallow, his throat completely dry, feeling Gillis's weapon digging into his spine and wondering if there was anything he could do to save his own life.

Then a voice breathed in his ear and he jumped. "Your microphone. Tell them I spotted you and you have to drop out. Anything else and I kill you. Understand?"

Don opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it and nodded. He cleared his throat. "Eppes here," he said, hoping his voice wasn't shaking. "I, uh, I think he spotted me." _No shit_, he couldn't help thinking. "I'm going to have to drop out."

"Rogeh that," came Boswell's faint voice. The man behind him had pulled the earpiece out of his ear and held it between the two of them so they could both hear the senior agent's response. "You didn't happen to see which way he was headed, did you?"

_Up an alley with me in tow_, he wanted to say. Instead, he turned his head slightly and the voice whispered, "Right at the intersection."

"Uh, I saw him go right on Commonwealth Avenue." Damn it, he should be able to think of some signal, something to say that would indicate something was wrong. Instead, all he could think of was the gun barrel at his back and the warm breath on his neck.

Boswell's staticky chuckle came through. "Comm Av, huh? We still gotta teach you to talk like a native, Eppes. All right, we'll find him. See you back at the office."

_God, I hope so_, he thought, his eyes briefly closing. "Okay. Good luck."

The microphone was removed from his lapel and he heard a quiet click as it was shut off. "Good," Gillis said. "Now, take off your jacket."

Don slowly lowered his hands and started tugging off his windbreaker. "What do you want?"

"Right now, the same thing that you do. To get out of here in one piece."

"Yeah, that'd be nice," he muttered, pulling his arm out of one sleeve.

"A smart aleck, are we? It seems you and I have some things in common."

"Except for the part about murdering people," he couldn't help retorting.

"Like you've never taken a life, Agent Eppes."

He stayed silent. He'd never even pointed his gun at a real criminal yet, but this guy didn't have to know that.

When he didn't respond, Gillis said, "You're pretty new at this, aren't you?"

"What makes you say that?" Nearly done removing his jacket, he was trying to think of how to take advantage of the fact that the gun was no longer poking him in the back.

"Because sooner or later you'll kill someone in the line of duty. It's part of your job. In that way, you're no different from me."

"You're being paid to kill them." It was a statement, not a question. They had assumed from the variety of victims that the killer was a paid assassin, taking jobs from a number of different sources. As long as he was here, he might as well get his curiosity satisfied, even if he didn't think he would get to tell anyone else what he'd found out.

"In a manner of speaking."

Gillis's voice was coming from only a foot or so behind him. _Keep him talking, that was the ticket_. Don searched his memory, trying to recall his training on how to disarm a suspect standing behind him. _Attack when they don't expect it, because that's the only advantage you have_. He said, "What do you mean by – " before he whirled around, one hand pushing the windbreaker upwards towards his captor's face while the other sought the barrel of the gun.

He realized instantly that he'd miscalculated badly. Gillis had taken a step to the side and Don's hands swung towards empty air. Before he could catch his balance, the gunman drove a fist into his stomach, then forced his head up with the barrel of the gun.

With the weapon digging into the underside of his jaw, Don slammed his eyes shut, unwilling to let the killer see the terror he was feeling. "You wanted to know how I knew you were a rookie?" Gillis hissed. "You just confirmed it, trying to overpower an armed man who knows what he's doing way better than you do."

Furious, Don opened his eyes to glare at the other man, whose face was only a couple of feet away. His intelligent green eyes were evaluating Don's changing facial expressions. When he saw that anger had replaced fear, the corner of Gillis's mouth actually quirked up and he backed off a step. "You may be new at this, but you'll learn. Now hand over that jacket, nice and slow."

He silently raised his hands in the air, the windbreaker held in one. Gillis snatched it out of his hand and handed him the red jacket he'd been wearing. "Put it on. Then turn around."

Don obeyed, wondering how he had telegraphed his move. That was something Terry had always been good at catching. Maybe he'd swallow his pride and give her a call after this. Assuming he got out of it alive.

There was the ripping sound of Velcro as Gillis revealed the bright yellow "FBI" across the back of the jacket. Then Don's arms were jerked behind him and his own cuffs tightened around his wrists. "All right, there's a Boston police car around the corner at the other end of the alley. I'm going to take my prisoner down there, flash my badge, and commandeer the car to take you in. Do anything to indicate that you're anyone other than Shaun Gillis and I shoot you, the cop, and whoever else happens to be nearby. Do as you're told and I'll let you go. Got it?"

Don nodded. Then before he could stop himself, he asked, "What do you need me for? Why not just walk away?"

"Once Boston PD thinks I'm in custody, they'll stop looking. They'll pass it on to the FBI and they'll stop, too. By the time they figure it out, I'll be long gone."

"But you'll still have me after you." _Stupid, Eppes_, he thought. _Why not just ask the guy to shoot you and be done with it?_

Gillis chuckled again. "I'll take my chances, rookie." He grabbed Don's arm and hauled him away from the wall, putting the gun in his back again. "Now come on, let's go."

Don marched down the alley, grimly determined to play his part. Much as it galled him to be playing along with this game, he didn't want a random police officer or bystander getting hurt, even if it meant he had to trust the word of a killer.

But if he got out of this in one piece, he wasn't going to stop until he tracked down Shaun Gillis. No matter how long it took.

ooooooooooooooo

New reviewers are always welcome! Experienced ones, too!


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer. Acknowledgments. Prologue. Done.

oooooooooooooooooo

Chapter 3  
July 21, 2008  
FBI Field Office, Los Angeles

"So Amita, what've you got?" Don spoke from his perch on a table at one side of the war room. Colby and David were seated on either side of the main conference table with Liz at one of the computers in the back. He gave his coffee a final swirl and sucked a few drops off the wooden stirrer.

"First, I have to warn you that I've only been at this for a week, and even then not exactly full time," she started while typing away at her laptop.

"Whatever you've got, we appreciate," Don said. "Since there's still no trace of our guy having left town, or of him staying." And if they didn't come up with something fast, the Assistant Director was going to reassign them to something more urgent and Don was going to once again miss his chance at nailing Gillis.

"Just thought I'd warn you," she said. She straightened up and looked around the room. "Also, this is kind of weird. Being here without Charlie, that is."

"Don't worry, we'll smile and nod at you the same way we would at him," Colby said sincerely.

She gave him a warning look and he responded with a cheeky grin. Don was pleased to note that she seemed slightly more at ease as she went on, "Well, you asked me to do some data mining based on the seven victims you've tracked over time, plus Anton Levski here in L.A. And after running an initial algorithm, I have to agree with you: there's no clear commonality between the victims. Or rather, there's about a dozen possible commonalities, but it's impossible to know which one matters without more data points."

"What kind of commonalities?" David asked.

"Well, for starters, they're all male, between the ages of eighteen and forty, living in fairly large cities and all killed by the same weapon: a .22 caliber. They all had some reason to be leery of the law, from the gangbanger to the gambler, although none of them had been arrested. But you probably already knew that."

"Those are all really broad parameters," David said, frowning.

"Right." She pursed her lips, looking as though she was deciding whether to say something or not. Don was about to ask her to get on with it when she took a deep breath. "Okay, one of the best ways to understand what you're doing in mathematics is to take a known problem and work through it step-by-step until you get the solution, then apply it to the new problem. So I found a closed case with a serial shooter and applied my algorithm to it, but I didn't get the right answer." She started slowly pacing back and forth in the front of the room. "I figured out the cause, did a little tweaking, and then went back to the data on Gillis, starting not from the known victims, but from a really broad profile of them."

"Male, eighteen to forty, etc.?" Liz asked.

"Exactly. That's obviously very extensive but I wanted to be sure I at least got the eight victims in question. As it turns out, that's not all I got." Amita stopped pacing and turned to face him. "Don, I don't know how to say this, but you don't have eight victims. You have fourteen."

"What?" His heart sank.

Amita took a step forward and tapped the keyboard. The picture on the screen changed to two rows of three faces, most with their eyes closed and all clearly photographed in a morgue.

After a moment, Don said, "That's not possible." With his coffee cup, he gestured towards the images, each with their forehead unblemished. "That's not Gillis's M.O."

"It turns out that it is, at least partially." She cast him a quick glance before looking back at the laptop. "One outcome of this whole thing with Charlie and Professor Sanjrani is that it's gotten me looking at the assumptions I make in my work."

"Nice to know something good's come out of it," Don muttered as he took a sip of coffee and set the cup down. He ignored the three sympathetic glances he could feel coming his way and kept his focus on Amita.

She flushed, but went on, "Using those broad parameters I mentioned, I looked at cases with a .22 but _not_ with a shot to the forehead. And I found six more where the ballistics matched Gillis's gun from the known victims."

"No one put this together before?" Don asked incredulously as he leaned forward, arms braced on the table on either side of him. "No way. That would have set off a few alarms if they all came from the same weapon."

Colby spoke up. "Not necessarily. I've spent a lot of late nights combing through ballistics data and I gotta say, our database is nowhere near complete. We merged our data with the ATF a few years ago, but it's not like there's anyone whose job it is to match up all the old files; it happens on a case-by-case basis. And a lot of the data comes from computer simulation, not actual fired weapons. If Gillis still has that gun in his possession, it wouldn't be in the database to match the victims' bullets to."

"And the gun is the only obvious thing they have in common," Amita added. "They were all single shots, but all different locations on the body, all different parts of the country. No fingerprints associated with any of these victims, so no way to match them to Gillis other than ballistics. On the other hand, they _do_ fit a modified profile of the eight you knew about."

"There _was_ no profile of the eight I knew about," Don muttered. "That's been the problem all along."

The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Not exactly." She walked over to the large screen, and Don could see her going into lecture mode. _Do they teach them that as part of the Ph.D. program?_ he wondered to himself. _How to get that tone of voice that says, "I'm here to tell you something you don't know, and you'd better pay attention"?_

"Once I had more victims to work with," Amita was saying, "I was able to dig a little deeper into the data. I can go into the details if you want, but it turns out that all fourteen had some kind of connection to one of two organizations at the time of their deaths: the Russian Mafia or the Bloods."

"The L.A. gang?" Liz asked.

"At least originally," David replied. "They've got branches in several dozen cities in the U.S., and even some in Europe."

"Wait a minute," Don said. "That's not right. The first guy I came across, Carlos Delpina. He moved to the U.S. from Cape Verde. I don't think either the Bloods or the Russians had spread that far by 1995."

"You'd be surprised," Amita said dryly. She leaned over her laptop and tapped a few keys. A world map sprang up with dozens of countries highlighted in red. "These are the places with activity that has been linked to what's today the largest group of the Russian mafia, which turns out not to be the same group you encountered here in L.A. Many of them weren't, strictly speaking, Russian in origin, but they became attached to the organization later through mergers of one kind or another."

"Like Daimler buying out Chrysler," Liz interjected.

"Except with guns," Colby added.

"And the eight you knew about all owed money to one or the other of these organizations, or at least a branch of them. The six that I found were harder to connect but it looks like they were snitches, rival gang members, or other things like that." Amita took a few steps back until she was standing against the bulletin board next to the projection screen.

"That makes sense," David said. "If one of these organizations is after someone who owes them money, they're going to make the hit as visible as possible to send a message." He tapped the center of his forehead. "Some other kind of hit, they might not need to be so obvious."

"Yeah, but it's very unusual for a hit man to have more than one operating style," Liz disagreed.

"If it's the same weapon, though…." Don trailed off. He leaned back on his hands, staring at the screen while he mulled over what Amita had said. "You're sure about this?" he finally asked.

"As sure as I can be," she replied, spreading her hands out. "I wish I could do more to verify it, but I have a conference paper due in a week, and I really need to concentrate on that. I'm sorry."

"No, I understand," Don said, waving a hand. Just because Charlie was tenured and could take all the time he wanted to work on extra-curricular projects for the FBI didn't mean all mathematicians could. "This certainly gives us a lot to work with."

Colby said, "Do we know how likely it is that he's still in town?"

"Oh right." Amita came forward and brought up the six victims' faces again, next to shots of the original eight. "It turns out that four of these--" she stepped back and pointed to the six on the left-- "were killed within three weeks of four of these--" with a sweep of her arm towards the right-- "in the same city."

Don scanned the images and let out a gusty sigh. "Damn it."

"What is it?" David asked.

He shook his head. "If Gillis hadn't gotten the jump on me in Boston, that's eleven more people who'd still be alive."

"You don't know that, Don." Liz looked over at him from her seat across the room. "These were not your average Joe Citizen types. If not Gillis, someone else would have gotten them sooner or later."

"Yeah, maybe," he said dismissively. It didn't matter--it was his fault this guy was still out there pulling the trigger. Okay, maybe not his fault alone, but he certainly bore a great deal of the responsibility. "So in other words, in order to find Gillis here in L.A., we need to be looking for people who the Russian mob or the Bloods might want to have a hit out on?"

"Gee, that'll be a short list," Colby muttered.

"Good, then it shouldn't take you too long to pull it together," Don said, hopping down from the table. He ignored the groan and nodded at David. "You've got one list, Colby's got the other."

David gave him a short two-fingered salute from his forehead. "Any idea how far back we should go?"

"I can help you with that," Amita said. "At least, based on the previous victims."

"Thanks, Amita," Don said. "You've done a great job."

She gave him a small smile. "Glad I could help, even if it's not what you're used to."

"No, you're right, it's not." When she looked up, slightly startled, he went on, "You're easier to understand than Charlie, for one thing." He meant it to put her at ease, but it still felt like a bit of a betrayal to say it and he frowned.

"I've spent more time teaching freshman calc," she said. "And don't worry, I won't say anything to Charlie. About anything here," she said, gesturing around the war room.

He nodded, knowing she wouldn't, but glad to have verbal confirmation. "Thanks."

Liz trailed him back to their cubicles and dropped down into the chair at Megan's old desk. There were only a few files on the top, and the fabric-covered walls were empty of the pictures and notes and thumbtacked reminders that had littered its surface. Liz's assignment here was only temporary until a replacement behavioralist could be found, so she hadn't bothered to move in any more stuff than was absolutely necessary. It was kind of weird to have her back, but since he'd never had any complaints about her as an agent, it was more good than bad. He kept bracing himself for awkward moments when it was just the two of them like this but somehow they never came. _Maybe we're actually acting like adults. Go figure._

Liz had picked up a pen and was tapping it against the surface of the desk. "So what's my assignment, boss?"

He was already pulling up his e-mail to verify that nothing life-threatening had come along in the last forty minutes. "Check Amita's work." He looked over to see her eyes widen and he chuckled. "Not the math. The ballistics and the victim descriptions. See if there's any evidence that still remains that could be checked for prints again."

She nodded and leaned back in the chair, casting a quick glance at the nearly-empty surface of her desk. "Don, don't take this the wrong way, but should we have a...well, a replacement for Megan on this?"

He furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

She fiddled with the pen. "A behavioral specialist. I mean, you've been approaching this from one angle for all these years and we just found out that it's more complicated than you thought. That might change our understanding of what he's going to do next."

"No, he's still after the same thing. We've got a better idea now about where to look, that's all."

"What about the other partner you used to have? Terry Lake was a behavioral specialist, right? Is she still with the FBI?"

He turned back to his computer, hoping she'd take the hint. "Yeah, but she's not going to come all the way out here for this. We can handle it."

"But are you sure that --"

"I said we can handle it, Liz." He turned back around and gave her a pointed look. "Right?"

She returned it for a moment before looking away. "Fine," she said shortly. "Doing it your way." She stood up and walked off, presumably heading back to the war room to get more information from Amita.

Don sighed and leaned back, the chair tilting almost to forty-five degrees. Yeah, maybe Megan could have provided some extra insight if she was here, but he didn't need it. He'd tracked Shaun Gillis for years, had actually run him to ground once or twice, and he knew how the man operated. He didn't need anyone else to tell him how his quarry thought -- he had years of experience to tell him that. This case was his to solve.

He ignored the little voice in his head that said maybe that was precisely _why_ he needed extra help on this one.

oooooooooooooooooo


	6. Chapter 6

my disclaimer and  
expressions of gratitude  
lie in the prologue

oooooooooooooooooo

May 14, 1997  
FBI Field Office, New York City

Don leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand over his eyes. He peered at the clock and sighed. Another night at the office after nine. He could almost hear Billy Cooper from down the hall telling him he'd brought it on himself with his goody-two-shoes attitude. Cooper had taken Don under his wing as the new guy in town, saying he reminded him of his younger brother. Don was grateful for someone to show him the ropes, even if the other man's way of doing things was a little more unorthodox than Don would like.

Bleary-eyed, he looked back down at the open case file on his desk: three gang-related shootings in the last week and no suspects. Something had set these three young men and their killers against each other, but as of now they had no leads about who or what that might be. Just as easy as everything else he'd dealt with since he got here.

After the debacle in the Boston alleyway, Don had found new determination to work as hard as he could to prove himself worthy of being an FBI agent. He disregarded Boswell's admonitions not to work such long hours, though he had to admit relief that his boss had expressed more concern over his well-being at Gillis's hands than anger that he'd let him get away. Still, Don took his failure personally and set himself to gaining experience and moving beyond his "rookie" status as soon as possible.

The trail on Gillis had run cold some time ago. Even with Terry's help, once Don had swallowed his pride and called the woman who had dumped him right before leaving Quantico, he'd run out of leads. She'd given him a good profile and told him what he'd done wrong without making him feel like a stupid rookie, which he really appreciated. So he'd called her back a number of times after that, asking if various other unsolved murders fit the pattern he had established, until she finally expressed worry that he was obsessing over Gillis. He stiffly thanked her for her concern and went back to work on the case, not wanting to be psychoanalyzed in detail by someone who knew him so well. She just didn't understand what this meant to him.

But Don's hard work on that case, and others, had paid off. When he got the word six months ago that he was being recommended for a promotion to New York, Boswell had called him in his office and given him a going-away present: his first case as an agent-in-charge. "Don, I know that Shaun Gillis still gets to you. And I'm not trying to encourage any kind of obsession, okay? But you know him better than anyone else and you're gonna be the one who finds him. Just don't take your eyes off him when you do, hmm?"

Knowing that the other man meant it as a gentle tease, Don took it with good humor. But he'd already made the vow to himself that he wouldn't stop until he caught the killer who'd humiliated him a year and a half ago.

In the meantime, though, there were other criminals to catch. And other people who didn't understand him quite as well as Boswell. Determined to show himself worthy of the promotion, Don had worked his ass off his first month in New York. Unfortunately, Mr. J.D. Anderson, Special Agent in Charge of the New York field office, simply interpreted it as Don's standard work ethic and now expected nothing less than a stellar performance every day. Which was why for the fourth night in a row, the ninth out of the last ten, Don was poring over files instead of crashing in his tiny studio apartment on the sofa that he was too tired to fold out into a bed.

He flipped through the crime scene photographs again. One man dead in the Bronx, two in Harlem. All gang members, apparently caught in a three-way battle. Two Dominicans and one Puerto Rican, all under the age of twenty.

Don paused to look at one of the photographs. The guy had to be the same age as Charlie, but what a different life. After whizzing through college faster than he'd passed through high school, his younger brother was now ensconced as an eighteen-year-old grad stduent at Oxford. Dad had fought a hard battle to keep Mom from following him to England like she had to Princeton, but Charlie had finally insisted that even if he _was_ only eighteen, he was an adult, capable of making his own decisions and living on his own. Don had the sneaking suspicion that Oxford had won out over Harvard and Stanford for that very reason: it was about as far away from Pasadena as the genius could get.

Not that Charlie would admit it to him. Not that he talked to Charlie very often. The last time had been…Don blinked, startled. Had it really been since New Years' that he'd had a conversation with his brother? Five months? Well, there'd been the move from Boston, and then getting settled here, and now he was so much busier than he had anticipated. The time difference made it hard to keep in touch, too. Five hours was enough time that the weekends were the only time it would make sense to call and then he was too busy catching up on sleep. Heck, it was only a three-hour difference to California and it was still six weeks in between phone calls home.

He rubbed his eyes, staring again at the young corpse in the photograph. This guy had a younger brother, too, according to the file. Don would bet any money, if he could find someone willing to take it, that they'd be investigating the younger brother's death as part of the escalating violence within the month. He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. Some things were worse than being too busy to keep in touch with your family.

The bullpen door opened and he leaned back from his cubicle to see who it was. "Cooper? What are you doing here so late?" The scruffy-looking agent was rarely at the office after five, though he certainly pulled his share of the workload with stakeouts and such. Rumor had it he was trying to get onto a fugitive recovery team so he could be out of the office more or less permanently.

"We got another one." Billy Cooper held up a manila folder. "Victim number four, just an hour ago up in East Harlem. Viceroys territory, same as the last. Anderson's on his way in but he wants you and me to start in on this one."

"Great." There went any possibility of sleep, if the boss was coming in. Boswell would have told him to head home and look at the new case with fresh eyes in the morning. "I'll put on another pot of coffee."

"Already done." Cooper dropped the file onto Don's desk and grabbed his mug. "I'll fill you up, okay?"

"Yeah, thanks," Don answered distractedly, already looking in the folder. Another Puerto Rican, it looked like, same age as the others. "God, what a waste," he muttered, thinking again of Charlie. He looked carefully over the rest of the information on the initial paperwork, his mind already making connections to the other three files on his desk.

He flipped over the first sheet of paper to the crime scene photos, and he froze. The first three victims had been shot in the torso or back, some of them multiple times. The picture Don was looking at showed one clean shot to the forehead.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "It's just a coincidence," he said out loud. "It's not Shaun Gillis."

"No, it's Ramon Alberro." Cooper deposited the coffee mug on his desk. "Who's Shaun Gillis?"

Don took a gulp of the coffee, wincing as it burned the roof of his mouth. "A case I brought over from Boston. Look at this," he pointed at the photograph. "It's not consistent with the other victims, is it?"

"No, but maybe things are getting more serious out there. Guys with better aim are pulling the trigger."

Don shook his head. "He's not like the other ones. Look, he's only been in the country six months, it happened at a different time of day, and it's consistent with my guy's M.O. I need to see the crime scene."

"Hey, Anderson's going to be here in fifteen minutes and he's going to want to see your ass in this chair, working on commonalities between the victims. Now, I'm all for pursuing my own line of research when it's needed, but it's _my_ ass if you're not here when Anderson gets in."

He clenched a fist in frustration. "I know what I'm talking about, Cooper. I'm the agent in charge on Gillis's case and if I get out there knowing what to look for, we might even catch him. The longer it takes, the more likely it is he gets away."

"What's going on here?" J.D. Anderson's voice boomed from the doorway. "You're supposed to be working together on this, boys, not yelling at each other."

Cooper, his back to the door, rolled his eyes. 'Boys,' he mouthed at Don, who quirked up the corner of his mouth in agreement. Everything that Pat Boswell had been as a supervisor and mentor to Don was missing from his new boss. How this man got to be a supervisory agent, Don would never know. It certainly wasn't based on his interpersonal skills.

"Sir, I've taken a preliminary look at this latest victim and the M.O. matches an earlier case of mine." Don stood up as the tall, broad-shouldered man approached, holding out the telltale photograph.

"A case of yours, huh? You're not old enough to have cases of your own." Anderson's eyes flickered down to the photo. "So he was shot in the forehead. These guys are getting more serious the longer it takes you to find them."

Don remembered his mother telling him to count to ten before speaking when he was in danger of losing his temper. Problem was, that just revealed that you were getting close to losing your temper. "Sir, this fourth victim is not the same as the others. There's enough things that stand out about him and that tie in with the earlier case on which I _am_ still the agent in charge, that I think it's an avenue worth pursuing."

Anderson's light brown eyes stared at him. "And you determined within a five-minute perusal of the file that this investigation needs to go in an entirely different direction? I think you need to take a closer look at Mr. Alberro here before you jump to any conclusions."

Don took a breath and kept his voice level. "With all due respect, sir, I think I've spent enough time looking at the previous three files that I can confidently say Mr. Alberro's murder more closely resembles those committed by Shaun Gillis than those of the previous three victims."

"You do, huh?" Then Anderson's head tilted slightly, as if Don's words had just registered with him. "Gillis. The guy from Boston, right?"

"That's right, sir." Finally, he was getting through to him.

Then Anderson chuckled, taking Don aback. "Have a seat, Eppes. You're not going anywhere."

"What?" Don looked over at Cooper, who was studying the floor with a decidedly neutral expression on his face. "But -- "

"I was warned about you. About that case. You blew an arrest in Boston and started obsessing over the guy, seeing connections to every unsolved murder with a bullet hole in the forehead. What would some contract killer be doing knocking off Puerto Ricans who are too busy shooting each other to notice?"

"And Dominicans," Cooper muttered, but neither man paid him any attention.

"I don't know, sir, but I have a feeling that -- "

"And I have a feeling that you're going to sit back down and connect Mr. Alberro to Messrs. Rodriguez, Batista, and Taveras. Now, Eppes."

Don took a step back, his fists clenching the folder he still held. "Who 'warned' you?" He couldn't believe that Pat Boswell would betray him like that. But who else knew about his struggle with Gillis?

Anderson folded his arms, looking almost amused. "You don't think I offered you a job without checking up on you, do you? Of course, everyone had good things to say about you or you wouldn't be here. But there _was_ one person who expressed concern about this one case; said you tended to get neurotic about Shaun Gillis. I figured I should take it with a grain of salt but now I see what she meant."

He had started to sink down into his seat, but now he rose up again. "'She'?"

"Yeah, your training partner, Terry Lake, down in Houston. She said it as a friend, of course, but I figure one of the Bureau's up-and-coming young psychologists ought to know, right?" He looked over at Cooper. "Keep an eye on him, would you? I want a preliminary report from the two of you by midnight." Then he turned on his heel and was gone.

Don dropped into the swiveling chair, stunned. Terry had told on him? He wouldn't have thought her capable of something like that, even if she thought she had his best interests at heart. What the hell was she _thinking_?

"You okay, man?" Cooper looked concerned. "Not gonna blow a gasket on me, are you?"

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. Maybe he could talk Cooper into considering Shaun Gillis as a devil's advocate position. Maybe if they got something to Anderson that looked good within a couple of hours, he could claim he was going home and then check out the crime scene. Maybe he'd find something more substantial to tie Gillis to the case and Anderson would _have to_ listen.

His hand fell into his lap and his eyes grew hard. And maybe he'd never speak to Terry Lake again.

oooooooooooooooooo


	7. Chapter 7

Still don't own 'em. Still wish I did. Still glad for my betas and my data.

oooooooooooooooooo

Chapter 4  
July 23, 2008  
FBI Field Office, Los Angeles

"Don, we've got something you're gonna want to take a look at."

He swiveled his chair around at Colby's words, checking his watch to see that it was a quarter till noon. "You got Gillis's potential target list done?"

Colby and David were standing at the cubicle entrance, the former clutching a few file folders. "Not yet, but we're almost there."

Eyebrows raised, he prompted, "Then what is it?"

The two of them exchanged glances and Colby apparently drew the short straw. "We were looking back through the six victims that Amita identified to see if we could find a reason why they were never connected to Gillis."

"Did you come up with something?" Based on their matching expressions -- grim, along with something else he couldn't place -- they had, and he wasn't going to like it.

"Do you know who else has had Gillis's case besides you?" Colby started.

Don thought for a moment, his brow furrowing. He'd left New York in a huff to work Fugitive Recovery, and while he and Coop had had one close encounter with Gillis along the way, someone else had been in charge of the case by then and he couldn't remember who. It hadn't been until three weeks ago that the neat bullet hole in Anton Levski's forehead had pulled him back in, and when he'd started investigating, he'd been surprised to find no agent listed as being in charge. "Can't say that I do," he finally answered.

"Looks like after you joined Fugitive Recovery, the case was handed to a junior agent in New York," David explained. "Since then, it's been through two other agents, including one in another office. We thought maybe that had something to do with why no one found the other six victims, that the case has been moving around so much no one had the time to get a good handle on it."

"Okay," Don said, his tone implying _And...?_

"We also thought the case might have moved around so much because Gillis did," Colby added.

Don shook his head. "Serial cases stay with the agent in charge, no matter how much the perp travels."

"Right. Unless the agent in charge leaves, retires, or has something happen to them." Colby held out the file folders he was carrying, his expression darkening. "Three times."

The back of Don's neck started to prickle as he slowly reached out to take the folders. "What are you saying?"

"There are four FBI agents who have been in charge of Gillis's case over the years," the younger man answered. "The other three are dead."

Disbelieving, Don opened the first folder to see a face from his past. "J.D. Anderson?" He frowned, doing a quick calculation in his head. "He must have retired years ago."

"Eight years ago, yeah. Which is probably why it got filed away last year as a mugging gone bad instead of the murder of a former FBI agent." Colby nodded at the folder.

"And how do you know it wasn't?" Sure, it'd be a big coincidence, but random bad things happened to people in law enforcement, too. Flipping to the next page, he saw that it was a .38, not a .22, that had done his former boss in. _There goes that theory, guys._

David's baritone voice broke in. "All three were shot with their service weapons. Anderson had kept his and the other two were still on active duty."

That could still be coincidence. Law enforcement officers were shot with their own guns more often than any of them liked to admit. He flipped open the second folder and briefly closed his eyes. "Aw, _man_."

"You knew him?" Colby asked, leaning forward to look at the photo clipped to the top sheet.

He nodded heavily, staring at the image of a man younger than himself. "Tony Bautista," he said, eyes automatically running over the information on the first page. Then he lifted his head and stared across the bullpen, diverted by memories. Had Tony taken Gillis's case on for the same reason that Don had: to make up for the screw-up that caused a hired killer to get away? And how much of a role had his own attitude and actions towards the younger agent played in what came later, maybe even in Bautista's death?

His gaze focused on the page again and something caught his attention. Tony had been dead for a long time, found in a Brooklyn alleyway back in 1999. "He only had the case for a year before he was killed?"

"And Anderson only had it for another year. It looks like it kind of fell through the cracks when he retired."

Don let out a huff of breath. Anderson had probably buried it to keep his own failure under wraps. He hadn't been willing to listen to a young Special Agent Eppes, and the results had cost him one agent and very nearly two more. Then he thought of Tony and grimaced. _Make that two agents and nearly one more_. "So when we picked it up again a few weeks ago…"

"It had been pretty much neglected except for a guy in the Chicago office around 2002." Colby pointed to the third folder in the pile. "Shot in his home two years ago. Could be a home invasion, but there's kind of a pattern here, don't you think?"

Sitting back in his chair, Don rubbed a hand over his face. "More likely it's coincidence. I mean, we've got a well-established pattern of behavior from Gillis, using the same weapon and taking the same kind of jobs from the same two groups of people. Even the victims Amita found are a variation on the pattern, not something completely different. Why would he bother going after people who used to be in charge of his case?"

"Revenge?" Colby asked. "He might still be on the loose, but you haven't made it easy for him."

Don gestured to the fourteen photos tacked up on the cubicle wall. "I'd like to think so, but it hasn't seemed to slow him down much, you know?" He looked back at the two partners and suddenly the nearly-identical expression on their faces made sense. It was the same expression they wore when they were trying to bring someone into protective custody: the mixture of determination and concern that he himself knew how to bring to bear on a reluctant subject. "Oh, come on. You don't really think…."

"You keep saying it yourself, Don." Colby looked at him intently. "It doesn't make sense that Gillis is still in town. There's a couple dozen calls coming into the tip line every day of people spotting him."

"It might make sense if you guys had finished the list of potential targets," he muttered in reply.

"Okay, how about people the Russians might like to get back at?" David pointed a finger at him. "Here's one."

He waved a hand, feeling slightly irritated. "Amita said that was a different organization. Besides, Gillis has only been hired to kill people who had dealings with those guys, not who tried to take them down. Has he killed one law enforcement officer in all this time?"

"No, he's killed three," Colby replied, his jaw set.

"Based on what, the fact that they all handed his case? Look -- two of the three were random crimes and Tony was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time, too." He shook his head. "I appreciate your concern, but he's not here to get me. He's here to get someone whose name we still don't know," he finished with a pointed look between the two of them.

David looked away, but Colby stood his ground. "I don't think you can afford to dismiss this, Don."

He slowly rose to his feet, wishing as he so often did for an inch or two more of height so he could loom more effectively. "I think I have a pretty good idea by now of how this guy operates. I've almost had my hands on him three times, and I am _not_ letting him get out of Los Angeles." He paused, fixing each of them in turn with his best commanding glare. "We need to find out who his target is, and I can assure you that it's _not_ me."

Colby's eyes flashed for a moment. "Fine, boss," he ground out before turning around and stalking away. David shot him an apologetic look and followed closely behind.

Don watched them go, his lips pressed together. How could they think they knew something he didn't about Shaun Gillis? For years after being the agent in charge, he'd followed every scrap of information he could find on the man, especially when he'd been puzzled to find that there _was_ no agent in charge. He looked down at the file folders still in his hand. Well, at least now he knew why that was the case. He shook his head and sat down, the chair rolling back a few inches as he did. Poor bastards. Even J.D. Anderson didn't deserve to have that happen to him.

He swiveled back around and dropped the folders on the desk, pulling up the document he'd been working on. He typed for about five minutes, but the folders kept catching his eye. Finally he sighed and leaned back in the chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. _Okay, Eppes. What would Charlie have to say about coincidences in this case?_

He already knew the answer to that one. Well, he didn't know the probability calculated down to four decimal places, but he knew the likelihood of him being the only man left alive who'd headed up a search for Shaun Gillis: pretty damn small. So where did that leave him?

The folders had slipped slightly after he put them down, papers now peeking out of their tops. Tony Bautista's photo stared out at him, eyes closed and a trickle of blood down the right temple telling the story of his fate. _If I hadn't thrown in the towel back in New York, would that still have happened to him?_ An even more chilling thought surfaced: _Or would it have happened to me?_

Amita's words from the other day came back to him, something about some good coming out of Charlie's getting kicked out of consulting in the form of learning to question basic assumptions. Maybe he needed to take a little of that advice. Colby and David had been visibly worried about him and he wouldn't be surprised if they were plotting right now how to keep an eye on him without him knowing about it. A faint smile crossed his face as he turned back to the computer. A few minutes of research should put them to rights.

Hours later, he had a monster of a headache coming on, his stomach was rumbling, and he was not happy. He checked his watch and saw that it was after two. Well, that explained the stomach and at least part of the headache. The unhappiness stemmed mainly from the fact that he couldn't find anything to disprove his agents' theory. Which didn't mean they were right -- he'd spent enough time around Larry Fleinhardt to know that -- but it did mean he couldn't dismiss them offhand like he had a few hours ago.

So he placed a quick phone call and half an hour later, fortified by two tasteless but filling energy bars, he journeyed upstairs to the Assistant Director's office. He was ushered in promptly, A.D. Wright gesturing to one of the two pseudo-leather chairs in front of his desk while he finished up a phone call. Thirty seconds later, Wright hung up the phone and said, "So, Agent Eppes, I assume you're here with an update on Shaun Gillis?"

He straightened up in his seat. "Yes, sir. We have a couple of ideas about why he might still be in the area." He sketched out their findings on the possibility of a target from the long list of enemies of the Bloods or the Russian mafia, leaving out the part about how said list was not yet completely developed.

Wright sat back in his chair, eyebrows lowering. "Is there some way you have of prioritizing that list? We must be talking hundreds of people."

Don bit back thoughts of Charlie and went on, "Well, it turns out that there might be something else going on." Explaining what Colby and David had brought to him earlier that day, along with his own research, he watched his boss's frown grew deeper and deeper.

When he was done, he was half afraid the other man was going to accuse him of being self-centered. Instead he said, "Gonna have to exempt you from a lot of assignments if we have to keep a guard on you, Eppes."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the tops of his thighs. "I don't think it's the most likely explanation. But if it is, I have an idea of what to do about it. And I need your authorization to carry it out."

Wright looked at him for a long moment and Don felt like the man was trying to read his mind. Finally he said, "Go on."

Speaking rapidly, Don laid out his plan. He'd only put it together in the last half hour, and it would still need some refinement, but he needed the A.D. to approve the concept before he and his team could start hashing out the details. To his surprise, the other man nodded along with him, asked only a few pointed questions and, once Don was done, pondered for only a moment before saying, "It sounds reasonable. But it's a big risk."

He nodded. "That's what it's going to take to catch this guy," he said. _And I'm damn well going to do whatever it takes to make sure that happens._

"All right," Wright finally replied. "I'll call Agent Wilcox and let him know his team will be assisting you on this." Then the A.D. looked at him over the top of his glasses. "I trust that you know what you're doing, Agent."

He rose to leave and did his best to project complete confidence. "I do, sir," he said firmly.

_At least, I'm pretty sure that I do._

oooooooooooooooooo


	8. Chapter 8

Okay, how about a little less talk and a little more action...

oooooooooooooooooo

October 18, 1998  
FBI Field Office, New York City

Don hit the "page down" button and bit back a sigh. His eyes were glazing over from a day of reviewing DMV records for a suspect in a bank fraud case, the third one in as many weeks. He hadn't been out in the field in almost a month. He tilted his head to the side to crack his neck and plodded on, inwardly grousing that this was not the kind of work he had signed up with the FBI to do.

Unfortunately, it all went back to his single-minded focus on Shaun Gillis and his boss's lack of empathy. As it turned out, Ramon Alberro had _not_ been one of Gillis's victims; ballistics had matched the weapon with a rival gang member's who was arrested two weeks later. Which meant Don had earned himself negative points with J.D. Anderson, and he was still not all the way out of the doghouse months later. He felt like he was on his way to following the same path that Coop had, focusing less on paperwork and more on any excuse to get out of the office. He wondered if that meant he was bound for Fugitive Recovery next.

The phone rang and he absently reached for it, eyes still on the computer screen. "Eppes."

"Hey, Donnie-boy."

"Hey, Sullivan." He swiveled away from the screen, glad for the respite. "How's life at the precinct?"

"Upliftin' as ever." The Irish accent came through even over the staticky phone line. "How about you? Catch any aliens lately?"

Don rolled his eyes. Why did the most popular show on TV right now have to be about alien-hunting FBI agents? It was inevitably the first thing that came up whenever he met a pretty girl – not that that happened on a regular basis. "Gee, I haven't heard that one in, I don't know, a couple of weeks?"

The good-natured chuckle on the other end of the line made him smile briefly. He'd first interacted with Captain Sullivan six months ago on a drug case in Brooklyn, when Anderson had dismissively left him and Coop to deal with the local "donut-eaters." By then he'd learned that his preferred course of behavior was to act the opposite of his boss, and so he'd made nice with the cop on the scene. So nice, in fact, that he started getting tips from the guy on cases that overlapped between the NYPD and the FBI.

"A couple o' weeks, huh? That how long it's been since ya talked to your folks?"

Don's gaze flicked to the family photo thumbtacked over his desk, the only personal effect among a sea of Post-It notes and crime scene images. He really needed to get it framed if he was going to display it at his desk. "Something like that." More like a couple of months, but he was reluctant to admit that to a family man like Sullivan.

"Well, I know what you're thinkin', Eppes. So enough with the social talk." He heard a shuffling of papers on the other end of the phone. "I had somethin' come across my desk this afternoon that might be of interest to ya."

"What's that?" he asked, picking up a ballpoint pen and twirling it between his fingers.

Sullivan's normally-cheery tone darkened a shade. "Man was found in Harlem this afternoon. Single shot to the forehead with a .22."

The pen fell from his hand and he sat up, bringing his feet to the floor. "Really?" He'd let slip to the officer at some point about his interest in any case that fit Shaun Gillis's M.O., with the assurance that if he heard anything, he'd pass it along.

The Irishman let out a huff of breath. "I know ya take an interest in anythin' like this, but it's probably another gang shootin'. Puerto Rican, twenty years old, three years out of the juvie."

"I'd still like to take a look," he said, checking his watch. Twenty till five. The streets would be a disaster and the subway would be jammed, but he could make it in half an hour. "Thanks, Pat. I owe you one."

"Not till ya find out if it's him or not," came the reply. "Good luck, Eppes."

"Thanks," he repeated, hanging up and reaching into a bottom desk drawer. In one of the hanging files towards the back was a pile of photocopies of the sketch he'd had drawn of Shaun Gillis after coming face to face with him in Boston. He grabbed a stack and bounded out of the cubicle.

Five minutes later, he'd persuaded his new partner, Tony Bautista, to come along with him. Coop had departed right about the same time that this guy showed up fresh out of Quantico. Rather than break up an established partnership, Anderson had paired them up. Don thought it wasn't the greatest idea to partner two of the greenest agents in the office, but what did he know? Tony was all right – earnest and focused, but a little too interested in pleasing J.D. Anderson. Before Don could stop him, he had headed over to their boss's desk to inform him of their departure and why.

"You're going where?" came the response.

Standing next to Bautista, Don saw his Adam's apple move as he swallowed. "To check out a lead on an existing case, sir."

Anderson's gaze shifted to Don. "I suppose this is your idea, Eppes."

He straightened his shoulders and fought the urge to hide the photocopies he was carrying behind his back. "Yes, sir."

The older man eyed him a moment more, then looked at the wall clock. "I'll pass on to HR that you each took half an hour of vacation time today."

"But sir – " Tony started.

Don grabbed his arm and tugged him backwards. "Fine," he said to Anderson, intent on disappearing before the man could change his mind.

They walked towards the elevators, Bautista grousing the whole way about the unfairness of losing vacation time on a legitimate case. Don wholeheartedly agreed, but as far as he was concerned, this was the closest he'd ever gotten to permission to chase Shaun Gillis and he wasn't passing it up. He punched the down arrow and gave his partner a glare that finally shut him up. There was half a minute of uncomfortable silence before the ding! of the arriving car.

When they stepped inside, there was already an occupant. Sam Wilcox was a tall, blond agent Don vaguely recognized from the Organized Crime division; he and Coop had hung out on occasion. "Heading off early, boys?" he asked as the elevator doors shut.

_Can you really call someone who's only five years younger than you "boy"?_ Aloud he said, "No, checking out a possible lead."

"Bank fraud heatin' up?" the taller man asked.

Don's hackles raised at the teasing tone in the other man's voice. "No, it's an older case."

"Possible contract killer," Tony piped up before Don could warn him off from saying more. He didn't need the whole office knowing he was chasing down whisper-thin leads on an unlikely case.

Wilcox's blue eyes narrowed as he looked at Don. "Coop told me about you," he said. "This is that guy from Boston, isn't it?"

Don turned towards the elevator doors, willing them to open, but the red numbers overhead indicated they were still twenty stories above the ground. "Yeah," he said in a tone that indicated he wasn't interested in saying much more.

He could feel Wilcox's gaze on him and braced himself for more questions or teasing. He was surprised when instead Wilcox said, "I've got some spare time. I'll tag along, if you don't mind."

Don gave him a searching look. After a second or two, he asked, "Why?"

Wilcox met his gaze and the corner of his mouth turned up. "Like I said, Coop told me about you. He's a friend. He said you might need someone to look out for you and Anderson sure as hell wasn't going to do it."

That was for sure, but Don didn't know if he liked the idea of an older agent watching over his shoulder as he carried out a wild goose chase. Still, if the geese turned out to be real… "Okay," he said. "131st and Lenox."

An hour later, he was more than glad that Wilcox had tagged along. They'd found the alleyway in question with little difficulty; the body was still there behind the crime scene tape, the officer on duty expecting Don. He'd taken one look at the neat hole in the victim's forehead and instantly flashed back to a body shop in Boston. Then he'd divvied up the sketches between himself and the other two agents and they started canvassing the neighborhood. It wasn't more than fifteen minutes before he got a hit, and a quick check with Wilcox, who was following along on the other side of the street, confirmed it. Shaun Gillis had been spotted in this neighborhood and, according to the shopkeeper Sam talked to, it had been within the hour.

Don dialed the field office, heart thumping with excitement. Gillis was _here_, in his city, within reach. All he needed was a few more agents and they'd have the guy.

"This is Control, go ahead."

"Control, this is 3695. Requesting backup for a multiple homicide suspect at -- " he squinted up at the street sign -- "133rd and 7th Avenue." He looked down the street lined with red brick tenements, watching passersby carefully in case Gillis was close at hand. No way he was getting surprised by the guy this time.

"I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that request."

The dispatcher's voice took a moment to sink in. "What?" he asked, loudly enough that a pair of young women passing by turned to stare, their finely-braided hair swinging out to the side as they did so.

The woman at the other end cleared her throat. "Agent Eppes, you are not authorized to call in additional agents at this time. I'm supposed to tell you to report back to the field office."

Don pinched the bridge of his nose and looked down at the line of weeds in the sidewalk. "Message received," he said, ending the call. _Loud and clear_.

"What's up?" Tony asked, coming up on his left.

Don frowned and made a snap decision. "No available agents," he said, slipping the phone back in its case. "So watch yourselves, okay? This guy is _here_, and he knows what he's doing."

They compared notes for a few minutes, mapping out a plan to cover the rest of the neighborhood. He was surprised when he realized that Wilcox was deferring to him -- he hadn't exactly led a field operation before. But for all he knew the other man hadn't either. He was also surprised at how fast his pulse was racing, and that as badly as he wanted to get his hands on Shaun Gillis, he was also enjoying the immediacy of being out here on the street, getting his hands dirty, doing more than sitting behind a damn desk. _Maybe Coop's got the right idea after all_.

He looked up and suddenly froze. Across the boulevard was a man in an olive green t-shirt and jeans, looking down the boulevard. He automatically stood out as the only white guy on the block, other than the three FBI agents. But the face was one Don knew all too well, the same face that was on the three pieces of paper he still held in his hand. "That's him," he breathed.

"Where?" Bautista asked.

Don was already moving towards the intersection, trying to figure out if he could stop traffic by holding out his badge or if he was better off using his gun. Across the street, Gillis was looking right at him.

And then he bolted.

"Shit!" Don took off running, barely noticing out of the corner of his eye that the light was changing. A dark blue compact had been gunning for the yellow light but slammed on the brakes as Don burst across its path, the driver yelling and giving him a classic New York salute. He barely noticed; all of his attention was focused on his quarry ahead. The pounding footsteps behind him told him that his backup, such as it was, was following his lead. He was definitely faster than Bautista, but Wilcox was an unknown. Given that the guy had six inches on him, that better mean at least some of it was in his legs.

He raced down the sidewalk, dodging the occasional startled pedestrian. Gillis was straight ahead, possibly within shooting distance if the street were deserted, but there was no way he could take a chance here. "FBI!" he shouted after the fleeing man. "Hold it right there, Gillis!" Not that it would make a difference to the hit man, but it might make the pedestrians get out of the way faster.

He saw Gillis swerve around a corner and when he got there, he turned and followed the same worn trail through a vacant lot, half overgrown weeds and volunteer trees, half decaying concrete. He was gaining ground and he pressed harder. Then he heard Wilcox shouting from close behind, "Step it up, Eppes!" Instead, he dodged to the side on the cracked concrete and watched the other man go by, running like a track athlete.

God, this was frustrating! He was so close -- he could see Gillis, he could see Wilcox closing on him, but it wasn't happening fast enough. At the same time, his adrenaline was racing like never before and the thought that his quarry was just a few yards away was all the encouragement he needed. "FBI!" he called again, more to warn the group of kids gathered on the sidewalk ahead than anything else. They were staring after Gillis, who had just shoved his way through their midst, when Wilcox and then Don came plowing through. By the time he was clear, he looked up to see Gillis dodging to the left, down a narrow passageway between two buildings. He racked his mind for a mental map of Harlem. There weren't alleyways here, were there? Was Gillis running into a dead end?

Don opened his mouth to warn Wilcox about a possible ambush, but the other man was too far ahead. So he put on another burst of speed to make sure he was there as backup against the killer waiting ahead.

He wasn't fast enough.

The gunshots echoed along the narrow street, followed closely by the scream of a woman sitting on a nearby stoop. Don rounded the corner, gun out in front of him, and his heart sank. Sam Wilcox was sprawled on his back, a bright red splotch on his chest.

Before he could get any closer, a gun fired from the back of the passageway and he dropped to the ground, instinct taking over. He looked in what he thought was the direction the shot had come from, but he couldn't make out anything other than a pile of trash in front of a scraggly chain link fence that cut the passageway in half. Gillis had to be _right there_, but he couldn't see him.

There was a noise behind him and he turned his head to see Tony Bautista coming around the corner. "Get back!" he shouted just as Gillis's gun barked again. Bautista dodged back into the street, then slowly poked his head around the corner. Don recognized the moment that the younger agent saw Wilcox; the play of emotions across his face was unmistakable. He'd never had an agent fall right in front of him, either, but he understood that he had to push it aside and deal with it later. "Cover me!" he snapped over his shoulder as he rose into a crouch and moved towards the side wall.

A moment later, he realized that wasn't going to happen. Bautista's face was pale and his gaze hadn't shifted from the still form on the ground. Don cursed under his breath and looked back towards the far side of the alleyway. Was that a person moving, or part of the trash pile? He raised his weapon and sighted down the length of the barrel, but hesitated with his finger on the trigger. For all he knew, it could be a homeless guy or a kid down there.

Another shot echoed and he jerked back against the wall. Bautista had disappeared completely. Without cover, there was no way he could get any closer to the back of the alley without ending up like Sam -- _don't think about that right now_ -- and in the meantime, Gillis could be getting away.

And in a few seconds, he saw the fence move and the clear shape of a person pushing through a gap in the chain link. "Hey!" he shouted, moving forward only to freeze again when a bullet whined off the wall next to him. He crouched even lower and kept an eye on the fleeing figure as he inched forward. Gillis turned the far corner, and Don started to sprint forward.

"Eppes!" Bautista's voice came from behind him. "Is he, uh -- "

He whirled midstride and stumbled, barely catching himself in time. Tony was standing over the fallen agent, gun down at his side, his face slightly green. Don turned back to look after Gillis and sighed. He knew how dangerous the killer was, and running after him on his own was tantamount to suicide. Not to mention that he still hadn't checked on Wilcox, and his partner didn't seem willing or able to do it.

So he holstered his weapon, turned around, and crouched down at the blond man's side. The first thing he noticed was the slight rise and fall of his chest. An instant later, he heard a strangled sound, like Sam was trying to say something. "Hey, don't talk," he said, whipping off his suit jacket and pressing it on the man's chest. "Save your strength, okay?"

"Can't -- "

"Bautista, get over here!" Don snapped. When his partner crouched down, he nodded at the black suit jacket, already turning a darker shade with Wilcox's blood. "Hold that down. I'm gonna call for an ambulance." _And they damn well better pay attention this time._

Sam tried again. "Can't feel my legs…" he managed before trailing off into silence.

Don shared a horrified gaze with Bautista. He tried to remind himself that Wilcox had offered to come along, that he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Don. But all he could think was that it was his fault this man had been shot. If he hadn't been tricked by Gillis in Boston, if he hadn't stayed out on the street like he had the right to be leading an investigation, if he hadn't been so slow running down 131st, they'd have caught their man.

But as the faint wail of sirens caught his attention, his eyes narrowed. No, if they'd had backup like he asked for, this wouldn't have happened at all. If he'd been treated like an FBI agent and not like a child, Gillis would be in custody and Wilcox would be alive. He slowly rose to his feet, heading past Bautista and out to the sidewalk to straighten his shoulders, pull out his badge, and tell the growing crowd that he was an FBI agent and help was on its way and it was all over.

Two weeks later, his requested transfer to Fugitive Recovery was approved and he left New York City for good.

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	9. Chapter 9

Hey, look at that: reviews came in faster, and the next chapter was posted faster. I wonder if there's a connection…

Disclaimer and thanks remain in the prologue.

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Chapter 5  
July 26, 2008  
Verdugo Rd., Glendale, CA

"And that towering home run by Soriano makes it eight to five, Cubs, with the bottom of the ninth coming up for the Dodgers."

"Aw, man." Don hit the mute button as the ballgame changed to a commercial. "Three runs?"

"At least it wasn't a grand slam." Colby took a sip of his Coke and plunked it back down on the coaster.

Don was sure the other man preferred a beer with his baseball as much as he did, but since they were on duty, it was soda instead. He frowned. He'd been pretty much "on duty" for three straight days now. But as long as the twitchy feeling between his shoulder blades remained, he was going to be keeping alert. "So tell me again how long we're keeping this up?" he asked, stifling a yawn.

"As long as it takes. Although believe me, much as I like you as a boss, you're not the person I want to be spending my Saturday night with."

"Yeah, well, the feeling's entirely mutual." Robin had hit the roof when Don told her what he was up to, and he was going to have some major making-up to do once this thing blew over. Which had better be soon, since he was getting increasingly edgy as the days wore on without Gillis taking the bait. "Guess it's until we catch him or we know he's left town."

Colby shook his head. "I still can't believe you talked Wright into this."

He drained his Coke can and set it on the coffee table. "Yeah. Let me revise that statement: until we catch him, we know he's left town, or a bigger case comes along and Wright doesn't feel he can spare the manpower."

"Don, we're not going to leave you hanging out in the wind. If Gillis is really after you – "

"Then he'll make a move sooner or later." The commercials were over and he turned the sound back on. "That is, _if_ he's after me."

Colby didn't reply. Two batters came up and went down in short order and the Dodgers were down to their last out. Suddenly, Don's cell phone rang and he jumped. He shot Colby a quick look as he opened the phone. "Eppes."

"Don, you've got company coming."

He had shot out of his chair and had his hand halfway to his gun before David's voice went on, "Charlie's on his way up."

Colby had quickly stood as well but Don waved him off, grimacing. "Did he see you?"

"If he did, he didn't say anything."

"Okay." He ran a hand over his jaw. "Keep alert out there, all right?" Gillis didn't use family to get to his targets, but Don had been spending more time at his apartment in the last couple of days than he had in a long time just in case. What he knew of the man's M.O. had already changed a couple of times, and in any case, it was good to keep alert.

Flipping the phone closed, he strode towards the front door, then abruptly turned around. He wasn't supposed to know that anyone was coming. A few rounds of pacing later, he finally heard a knock and moved quickly to answer it.

Don took a look through the peephole out of habit, then opened the door. "Hey, Charlie, what're you doing here?" he asked, hoping he sounded casual.

His brother stood in the hallway, hands shoved in his pockets, curls falling over his forehead. "Hey. Can I come in?"

He hesitated only a second. "Sure." Stepping back, he watched Charlie carefully as he entered, noticing the tense line of his shoulders and the way he was fiddling with something in his pocket, probably car keys. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine." There was a pause and then Charlie said, "Actually, that's what I came here to ask you."

Don closed the door and turned the lock, a movement that didn't go unnoticed by the sharp brown eyes across from him. "Sure, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

Charlie opened his mouth to say something when he was interrupted by a sound from the living room. "Oh, sorry," he said, looking quickly towards the source of the noise. "I didn't know you had company."

For a moment, Don thought that it would be easier to pretend it was Robin in the next room and usher Charlie out, but then Colby came into view. "Hey, Charlie. How's it going?"

"Good." Charlie shifted his weight a little. As far as Don knew, he hadn't seen any of the team for about three weeks now. "How are you?"

"Fine," Colby replied. He nodded back towards the living room. "My apartment's being fumigated, so Don's letting me crash on his couch."

Don shot him a grateful look and the non-verbal reply in the younger agent's eyes was clear: _You owe me one_.

It didn't last long, though. Charlie had crossed his arms and was looking back and forth between the two of them. "Really," he said in a dry tone.

Don mentally crossed his fingers as he raised his eyebrows and put on his authority face. "Yeah, really."

"So is it the same case with David's apartment? 'Cause he might be more comfortable inside than sitting out in the car."

This time, the look on Colby's face clearly said, _Busted_. "I'm just gonna…" he said as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the living room.

Don thought about making him stay, but then realized that things could get ugly. So he nodded and Colby slinked off in the direction he'd come from. He turned to look at Charlie, still standing there with his arms crossed. For a moment, Don could see their mother in the stern look on his face, eyebrows lowered and dark eyes demanding an answer. He shrugged one shoulder and moved backwards, propping one foot against the kitchen wall as he leaned on it. "It's FBI business, Charlie."

"That is such crap."

"Excuse me?" He raised the level of his voice a notch or two and leaned away from the wall for greater effect. Maybe he could scare Charlie away before anything came out into the open.

Charlie's eyes were flashing. "It might have only been for a couple of days, but I _did _go through the FBI training course. One of the things we learned to do was spot a tail. There's been an agent following me around for the past three days. There's another one parked outside the house after I leave; I assume he's watching Dad."

Don's mouth tightened, but he didn't say anything.

"At first I thought it had to do with Dr. Sanjrani," Charlie went on. "Then I realized it started the same day you held that press conference practically daring Shaun Gillis to come after you."

"Oh come on, Charlie. I did not 'dare' him to come after me."

Charlie briefly pressed his lips together. "You said that in addition to several known killings, he was suspected in the deaths of three FBI agents, and then you said they had all worked his case. Which makes you a prime target."

Don threw up his hands. "I only said that in response to a reporter's question."

"Do you really think I'm stupid?" Charlie put his hands on his hips. "Remember the kidnapping case I helped you out with in March? Your 'reporter' was on that task force." Don's face fell as Charlie went on, "You set that question up. You wanted it known that you know Gillis is still in town and that he's gunning for you. I can't believe you would do something like that."

He let out a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had hoped that by staying away from the house he would not only draw Gillis out into the open, but avoid exactly this conversation. "Charlie, I've got to catch this guy. And I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make that happen."

"Even if it means endangering me and Dad?"

This time, he didn't have to fake the anger. He stepped forward and jabbed a finger at Charlie's chest as he snapped, "Hey, I would _never_ do something if I thought it would put you or Dad in danger. _Never_. You got that?"

Charlie had the good sense to look abashed, but he was still frowning. "But you'd put yourself in danger?"

He spread his hands wide. "I don't have a choice. If we're right and he wants to come after me, then fine. Let him do it. We'll be ready for him. If we're wrong, then no harm done." Except for a lot of bored agents guarding people who didn't need to be guarded, but that sure beat the alternative.

Charlie was regarding him shrewdly, the dawning light in his eye the same as when he figured out a particularly difficult math problem. "He's your P vs. NP, isn't he?"

Don furrowed his brow. "What are you talking about?"

Charlie leaned against the counter, his weight on his forearms. "The first time I started working on P vs. NP was the fall I moved to Oxford." He looked down and started picking at a smudge of dried-out tomato sauce on the white tile. "I was supposed to be this super genius, you know, able to – to leap tall math books in a single bound or something." Don's mouth twitched as he went on, "So I picked this classic problem and figured I could get through it in a month or so. And it became this obsession. It wasn't until I met Susan Berry that I paid attention to anything other than class and the problem." He finished with the blob of tomato sauce and moved on to something dark green and equally stuck to the countertop. "Then we broke up and I moved back here, and I picked it up again. Larry got me to turn away from it that time. Then when Mom – " Don saw his throat work as he swallowed. "When Mom was dying, it was like if I could just solve this thing that had been on my back for years, if I could make one thing right, the other thing would be right, too."

"Aw, Charlie." He took a step closer and clapped a hand on his brother's shoulder. "I didn't know that."

Charlie looked up at him. "No, you didn't." There was a pause. Then he added, "But you _do_ know about the last time I worked on it."

Don nodded. It was one of the very first cases Charlie had helped him with, but he'd thought at the time that it was going to be the last. "The Charm School Boys."

"Yeah."

Silence fell. Then Charlie stood up and brushed off his hands. "I know it's not a perfect analogy. I mean, I can choose to work on a math problem or not, at least to the extent that I can control what goes on in my head. You have to deal with whatever comes across your desk and that includes Shaun Gillis. But…" He trailed off, then stood up straighter and went on, "I think of P vs. NP as a nemesis of sorts, something that I've been after for years and that I'm going to get one of these days. You see it as something that I use to hide away from the world when I don't want to deal with what's going on."

Don stared at him a moment before it sank in, and then he frowned. "Wait -- you think I'm using this case as an excuse?"

The mathematician looked down for a moment, but then met his eyes. "Dad thinks you're avoiding me again and that's why you're not coming around the house."

"Well, he can go on thinking that. You're not telling him otherwise."

Charlie pursed his lips. "I don't know if I can do that."

"Charlie, come on. I don't need him worrying about me, too."

"How do you know Gillis wouldn't come after either of us if he wanted to get to you?"

"Because that's not how he works." He lowered his voice so Colby wouldn't hear him sharing confidential information with someone without a security clearance, although the raised volume of the television told him the junior agent was already trying to avoid hearing anything that was being said in the kitchen. "In no case that we've come across has he done anything to the families of his victims." Charlie's face paled a bit at the word 'victims,' so he rushed on, "I've got good people watching my back, I'm taking precautions, and we're gonna get this guy. It'll just be a few more days," he added, hoping that it was true.

"Then why do you have someone following me and Dad?"

He looked straight into his brother's eyes. "Because I could never forgive myself if I was wrong."

Charlie looked back for a moment and then nodded. "Okay. But why didn't you tell either one of us about it?"

"'Cause I really don't think there's anything to worry about. Hell, I don't think that _I_ have anything to worry about, but at this point, if I can draw him out, I'll be happy." He saw Charlie frown and he added, "Most of the other agents were killed years after they had the case. We're still pursuing other possibilities but it's getting more and more likely that he slipped out of town without us noticing."

The room grew quiet. Finally Don said reluctantly, "I'll call Dad tomorrow and tell him what's going on."

"He'd like it better if you came by," Charlie suggested.

He shook his head. "If there's even a chance that Gillis is watching me -- which I don't think he is -- there is no way I'm leading him to you two."

He was surprised when Charlie grinned. "More ribeye for me tomorrow night, then."

Don gently punched his brother's upper arm. "The next one's got my name on it, okay?"

"Sure thing." Charlie slugged him back and then dug his keys out of his pocket. "I guess I should be going."

In other circumstances, Don might have tried to figure out how to ask him to stay and hang out, but he didn't like the feeling that the target on his back might transfer to Charlie if he stayed around too long. So all he said was, "Drive safe."

"At least there'll be someone close behind me if I get a flat," his brother replied.

"Hey, it's the FBI, not Triple A," Don retorted.

Charlie grinned. Then he called out, "G'night, Colby!"

"See ya, Charlie," came the voice from the living room.

And then he was gone. Don shut the door behind him and flipped the deadbolt before turning and leaning back against the door. Honestly, he thought it was a big waste of time to be hiding out here at home with two agents on guard, plus the two more on Alan and Charlie. They all had much better things to be doing with their time.

Of course, if he was _really_ honest with himself, he wouldn't have proposed putting himself out as bait if he didn't think Gillis would go for it. And Wright wouldn't have gone along with it if he didn't think there was a good chance that it would actually work. Still, it was kind of funny that after all these years, now that he had his boss's ear, he was _hoping_ that he was wasting everyone's time. Much as he wanted to nail Gillis, he wasn't thrilled about the idea of getting shot at in order to make it happen.

He thought for a moment about what Charlie had said about the 'unsolvability' of this case. There was another way this was his P vs. NP: that problem had shaped Charlie over the years, between his ferocious single-mindedness and inability to give up until something whacked him between the eyes. There was no doubt that Shaun Gillis had shaped his own life just as much, maybe even in the same ways. It made him wonder what Charlie would ever do if he solved the math problem to end all math problems. _Find another one, no doubt_.

He gave a small smile and started back towards the living room. Yet another way that he and his brother weren't so different after all.

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	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer, check. Acknowledgments, check. Don in trouble, check. We're all set!

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November 7, 1999  
Eliot Park, Minneapolis

Don rubbed his hands together and turned the heat up another notch. It had no right to be this cold in early November. How people could stand to live in this icebox of a town, he had no idea. He'd been careening across the country for the past year, chasing down reluctant witnesses and the occasional honest-to-goodness bad guy, and more and more often he found himself wishing he could settle down somewhere and simply not move. Maybe after this they could request a case in Miami. He let out a soft snort. With his luck, they'd be assigned to Fargo next.

The car door swung open and he closed down the pity party. Coop swung his six-foot frame inside the beat-up Civic and slammed the door shut. "Damn, it's cooooold, don'tcha know," he said in one of the worst imitations of a Minnesota accent Don had ever heard.

"So what's up?" Don asked, jerking his head towards the decaying Victorian across the street.

Coop held his hands up to the heat vent. It wasn't really _that_ cold out, but since they'd been in Oklahoma two days ago, they weren't exactly dressed for the weather. They hadn't thought twice about putting their Kevlar on this morning, figuring it'd be worth it for the warmth if nothing else. "Says she hasn't seen him."

"At all?"

"Not since her -- and I quote – 'no-good brother finally got what was coming to him'." He shook his head. "Said she moved here from Chicago to get away from all that crap, and she doesn't want it following her."

"You believe her?"

"Hard to say." He reached into his pocket for a pack of gum and offered it to Don, who took a stick. "Not like I got a look inside the place."

"Guess not." While his partner knocked on the front door, Don had been ready on the street in case their quarry made a run for it. After a few minutes, when it became apparent that no drug dealers who had skipped out on their bail were going to sprint out of another entrance, he'd ducked back in the car and turned the heat up, watching Billy have an increasingly lively conversation with the woman at the front door.

Something down the street caught his eye, and he squinted at it, his jaw working on the gum. It wasn't the worst neighborhood he'd ever been in, but despite the fact that the University of Minnesota was only a few blocks away, this didn't exactly feel like a student neighborhood: too many vacant lots, not enough beat-up couches and empty beer bottles on the porches of the tattered apartment buildings. They were parked in the middle of the block and a black sedan facing them at the far end appeared to have an occupant. He frowned. What would someone be doing sitting in their car at eight in the morning on a Saturday? When it was below freezing outside?

He voiced the thought to Coop and the other man sat up a little straighter. "Think it's Howland?"

Don squinted again. "Naw, it looks like a white guy."

"Better not be another damn bounty hunter." Coop snorted. "Guys think they're so good at chasing people down, they should do it as a real job."

He yawned and leaned his head back against the seat. "Can't say I'd recommend it as a career choice."

"What are you talking about, Eppes?" There was genuine surprise in his partner's voice.

Don was trying to think of how to phrase it when a rusted Chevy turned the corner and headed towards them. "Never mind," he said quickly. "Betcha ten that's our guy."

They watched as the Chevy came closer. The African-American man in the front seat seemed to fit the description of Marcus Howland: twenty-two, tall and thin, not that that wouldn't describe a lot of residents of this neighborhood. Don put one hand on the door handle and rested the other on the holster of his gun. Beside him, he could feel Coop tensing the same way.

The car drew even with them and slowed down to pull into the driveway of the Victorian. At the same time that Don visually confirmed it was Howland driving, there was a flash of light from the front window of his sister's house. The car came to a dead stop halfway in the driveway. Don opened the door and leveled his pistol at the Chevy. "FBI!" he called, shattering the morning quiet of the street. "Open the door and get out of the car. Slowly."

Nothing happened but a distant car door slamming. And then the Chevy lurched ahead into the driveway and Don raced forward. In front of the garage, Howland burst out of the car and took off through the back yard. Don grimaced and shouted over his shoulder at Coop to follow in the car, spitting out the gum so he wouldn't choke on it if he heaved in a breath the wrong way.

He chased the taller man through a series of backyards, each one slightly shabbier than the last, all at a sprinting pace. If Howland was armed, he wasn't waving it around, which reassured Don somewhat. It might have been a rush the first couple of times he did a flying takedown in front of an admiring (or at least gaping) audience, but the danger of random shots being fired had quickly taken off that edge. And up ahead, the residential street was changing into a commercial one, which meant more traffic and more bystanders.

Or maybe not. The billowing white roof of the Metrodome was visible a couple of blocks away, which meant a sea of empty parking lots. Howland was about a block ahead, leaping over a chain and into a closed-off expanse of asphalt. Don shortened his stride slightly and cleared the same chain, feeling the chill air fill his lungs as his breaths came shorter and shorter. _Damn, this guy's fast. Shouldn't Coop be around with the car by now?_

Past the grey concrete sports stadium, they veered to the right, away from the glass high-rises of the city center and towards a different kind of skyscraper. Don was confused to see what looked like grain elevators so close to downtown. Then he saw the "Gold Medal Flour" sign on top and, as they drew closer, he saw the burned-out building at their base. Ruins of industry, nothing more.

Apparently Howland thought those ruins would be a good place to lose a tail, as he cut through another empty parking lot and made for the tall cylinders. Don opened his mouth to yell at him to stop, but he figured he should save his breath. "Enough already," he muttered to himself and put on another burst of speed.

He had to slow down to squeeze through a gap in the chain link fence around the mill site and then the broken concrete strewn with burnt timbers and rusty metal made him watch his footing more carefully. Howland had disappeared around one of the tall concrete cylinders. Don marked it closely and, moving as silently as he could, crept towards it from the other side. Gun in front of him, breathing as silently as he could, he edged forward.

He saw the plume of breath before he saw the man, and he leaped out, gun trained on him. "Hands up, Howland."

The other man froze and looked around, wide-eyed, but there was nowhere for him to run. Don cast a quick glance at his waist and didn't see a weapon. "Turn around and put your hands on the wall," he barked, keeping his distance just in case.

Howland hesitated, then slowly turned and leaned his weight on his hands at head level. "You got the wrong guy," he started.

"Don't think so, Marcus," he replied, coming forward cautiously until he could rest his gun against the other man's back as he patted him down. When he was done, having found him unarmed, he holstered his gun and reached back for his handcuffs.

Marcus was muttering to himself, but not loudly enough to be heard, and Don didn't figure it was worth the effort to make out the words anyway. He cuffed the suspect and paused to finish catching his breath, one arm still pressing Howland against the wall. Looking up, he saw that they were right above the Mississippi River, with a short but steep bluff falling off about fifty yards in the distance and a dam and lock running across the water below.

Facing the river, his back was to the direction they'd come in. So when he heard footsteps behind him, at first he was relieved that his partner was finally here. When a distinctive click sounded, he was about to tell Coop that he had it under control. Then something snapped into place in his brain.

Glocks didn't make that sound. Their safeties were internal.

It wasn't Coop behind him.

His heart started pounding but he played it like he didn't know any better. Forcing his voice to stay steady, he said, "I've got it from here, partner," starting to reach towards his right hip while cursing the fact that he'd put the gun away before taking out the cuffs.

"Stay right where you are, Agent."

The chill that ran down his spine was from more than the icy breeze blowing across the sweat on his neck. He hadn't heard that voice in years, but he hadn't forgotten it -- or any of the details from the first time he thought he was going to die. Shaun Gillis's voice was burned into his memory as clearly as the cold green eyes set in the narrow face and the utter humiliation he'd dealt him. His mind started racing. What were the odds -- why was Gillis after Howland -- why the hell had he put his gun away -- where was his partner --

"Hey, what's going on?" Howland burst out, twisting in his grip.

Don pressed him harder against the concrete wall with a muttered, "Quiet," trying to figure out what move to make. If he was lucky, he'd get out of this with two fugitives in his grasp. If he had to choose, he'd pick the killer over the drug dealer as his arrestee of choice. Of course, if he wasn't lucky, two bullets from Gillis would end things really quickly. And if he was _really_ unlucky, this would explain why he hadn't seen any sign of his partner yet.

Gillis was coming closer, his feet crunching on the broken concrete about twenty feet behind him. "Take a step to the right, Agent. Nice and slow. You're not the one I'm interested in."

Don suddenly realized that the hit man had only seen the bright yellow letters on his vest, not his face. He wondered if he would recognize him, but it was worth a shot. Raising his hands into the air as if he were going to comply, he slowly stepped back, turning sideways so his right side was hidden. Then he swiftly turned his head towards the gunman.

It only took a second for the disbelief to flash across the other man's face, but for that moment, he was frozen in place and that was enough for Don to yank out his own weapon and raise it. "Drop it, Gillis," he growled the words he'd been wanting to say for years.

The other man's lip curled up. "Well, well. Agent Eppes." He shifted his aim so his gun was pointed right at Don. "Get out of my way, rookie."

He steadied his own aim on the other man's center of mass, adjusting his stance so he was in front of Howland. His vest was going to have to protect them both. "No way."

Gillis jerked his chin towards the man behind Don. "He's not worth your life. Being a hero might be one thing if the bastard was worth it, but no one's going to miss this guy."

Don briefly thought of the man's sister only a few blocks away. "If he's that unimportant, then what are you doing here?"

Gillis gave a sideways nod as if to say _Touché_. Aloud he said, "I'm not warning you again."

"Neither am I." He heard movement behind him and snapped without looking, "Stay still, Marcus!"

He heard Howland mutter something, but it was the sound from his left that caught his attention: running footsteps, followed shortly by a voice he was extraordinarily glad to hear. "Don, what the hell…?"

Gillis looked sharply to his right and only then did Don risk a quick glance to see Billy Cooper a hundred yards distant, coming their way at a dead run and reaching for his weapon. When he looked back, Gillis was taking a step back, gun still raised. "Guess I'll see you around," he said.

And then he pulled the trigger.

Don fell backwards, his own gun discharging into the air. He hit the ground on his back with a thump, the breath whooshing out of him. His first thought was that he must be dead; no one could get shot in the chest at that close of range and stay alive for more than a few seconds. His second thought was that he really should have called home more often and that Mom and Dad apparently had been right to worry about him so much.

Then his brain caught up and reminded him that he was wearing Kevlar, and that the sudden pain he felt in his sternum was the relatively soft punch of an absorbed projectile and not the sharp bite of a bullet. Still, it was all he could do to catch his breath and fight down the rush of fear and adrenaline that was every bit as paralyzing as if he'd actually been shot.

It registered in the back of his head that someone was shouting his name, and he woozily lifted his head just as Coop came charging up, his face wreathed in fear. "M'okay," he muttered, waving his right hand, still holding his weapon, in the direction where Gillis had been. "Go get him."

Billy hesitated only a second before racing off between the grain elevators, back towards downtown. Don watched him go, and then a noise to the right caught his attention: Marcus Howland was trying to sneak away in the excitement. He snapped, "Hey, hold it," in the strongest voice he could muster. It wasn't very strong, but he was able to raise his pistol with both arms, shaking only slightly, and point it at the fugitive.

Marcus instantly leaned back against the wall. "Stay cool," he said. "I didn't have nothing to do with you getting shot, man."

"No, you didn't," Don agreed, slowly sitting up. He pressed a hand to the part of his chest that ached the most, wincing as he did so. Damn, that was going to hurt in the morning. When he realized his hand was almost directly over his heart, he couldn't hold back a shudder.

Suddenly, it was _really_ cold out here.

"You all right?" the dark-skinned man asked. When Don looked at him in confusion, he went on, "Dude meant that for me, not you. You're crazy, standing in front of me like that."

"It's my job," was the only answer he could make. Which seemed to consist of chasing down two-bit criminals and saving their lives, instead of the grander scale of the public that he'd sworn to protect. "You're gonna have to tell us why a hired killer would be after you."

Marcus's eyes widened, but he didn't say anything. They stayed quiet for a few minutes: Don hunched over, gun halfheartedly aimed at the bail jumper, who for his part wasn't moving a muscle. When Coop returned, grim-faced and empty-handed, Don let him help him to his feet. They trudged back to the car and loaded Howland in. They'd head for the field office, which was ironically only a few blocks away. They'd hand in their fugitive and sound the alarm on Gillis. Then Don would probably be forced to submit to a medical exam, even though he needed to be out there hunting down the man who'd just tried to take his life.

Damn it, he wanted to catch that guy! He brooded as they drove downtown that as long as he was in Fugitive Recovery, even as good as he and Coop were, they weren't going to get to choose their assignments. Besides, it would take a lot more than the two of them to bring in Shaun Gillis. He reached out and cranked the heat up as high as it would go, trying to ignore the ache in his chest and to forget the panic he'd felt when Gillis had fired.

Maybe it was time to come in from the cold.

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Sorry to any Minnesotans out there; I know it's a cliché to write about it being too darn cold, and I know Minneapolis-St. Paul is magnificent in the summer, but it fit in with the story…


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer and acknowledgments are in the prologue. Here, however, is where I remind you to make sure your seatbelt is fastened. ;)

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Chapter 6  
July 30, 2008  
Eppes residence

Don poked his head inside the front door. "'Lo?"

He was met with silence. Well, the driveway was empty, and since the garage was used for parking chalkboards rather than vehicles, he wasn't surprised that no one was home to answer. Still, it figured that now that he could finally show up at home, everyone was away. He shut the door behind him and turned the lock, leaning back against the door and weighing the keys in his hand. Maybe he should just head back to his place; he could drink a beer and watch the game there as easily as he could here. But there was something about home that appealed right now after the last couple of weeks. Home might be people as much as a place, but there was still something about the warm interior of his childhood house that was soothing after a rough case.

He tossed the keys on the entry table and wended his way through the dining room. There was a white sheet of paper on the table and he paused to read it. "Charlie," it said in Alan's firm scrawl, "Got a call that a friend was sick…back by ten." Don looked at his watch. That was an hour away yet. Oh well, he'd at least have someone to talk to before long.

As he walked into the kitchen, the wind outside was rustling the leaves and a tree branch scraped on the roof. _Charlie needs to take better care of this place_, he grumbled to himself. Not that he'd do any better if it was his place, but his brother had a responsibility to all three of them to keep the family house in good shape. Loose tree branches could lead to loose shingles, and once the rain started up again in a few months, that could lead to leaks in the roof.

He shook his head as he opened the fridge and grabbed an amber-colored bottle. _Sounding more like your old man all the time, Eppes_, he thought with a smirk. There was a plate sitting on the middle shelf with squares of light brown cake covered with creamy icing, plastic wrap around the whole thing. He unwrapped it enough to snag a piece, then tucked the film back in place. No one would even know a piece was missing.

Munching on the carrot cake, he strolled back into the living room and plopped down on the couch, setting the bottle on the coffee table. A few minutes later, he was watching the Dodgers winning a game for once, the tension that had been knotting his shoulders for days starting to seep away. He gradually started to relax, a corner of his mind wondering if he was going to be awake by the time Alan got home.

The television flickered through a series of commercials, but the last one caught his eye. It was a preview for the eleven o'clock news, the perky news anchor announcing the end to the FBI's search for a wanted killer, but not providing any more information -- at least until viewers tuned in after the ballgame. Don snorted. He was curious to see how this would appear on the news. What did the average citizen get to see of the cases he worked on, anyway? So far, it looked like they got to see misinformation. It wasn't like the FBI was done searching, just the L.A. Field Office.

Late last night, Liz had gotten a hit on one of Gillis's aliases. He'd used it to rent a car in Palmdale, seventy miles north of L.A. When they faxed a photo to the rental car agency, they'd confirmed it and said he'd asked for directions to Las Vegas. The car was eventually tracked to the parking lot at McCarran International Airport, but not until mid-afternoon. So a team of agents out of the Vegas office were spending the night combing through lists of outbound passengers and hours' worth of surveillance recordings. Don's first impulse had been to hop in the car and drive up there himself, but his conversation with Charlie had been weighing on his mind. Was he really using Gillis's case to avoid thinking about everything that had been going on here in L.A.? Maybe he was better off letting the locals handle this and getting some distance on it himself, literally as well as figuratively.

Then, at about five in the afternoon, a call came in from the LAPD. A young woman had been found dead yesterday in San Pedro with a single hole from a .22 in her forehead, and it had taken the cops a little while to make the connection to his case. Which made one more failure to put on his list, one more person who would be alive if he hadn't let Gillis out of his grasp so many times. Colby and David were tracking down who she was and why she'd been a target, but suddenly he couldn't take it anymore. He'd been running around waiting to get shot at for five days and it had all been for nothing. Worse yet, by focusing their resources on him, they'd missed the real target. He'd spent fifteen minutes chewing out his team for that, with the promise of more later, before storming out of the office.

Then he'd driven around for an hour or two without any particular destination, passing by Robin's place before remembering she was out of town, pausing outside his own apartment but inevitably coming home. He'd never been in any danger, had never needed to stay away, had worried Dad and Charlie for nothing. Now, of course, they weren't here to apologize to. He took a long swig of beer and leaned his head back, propping his feet up on the coffee table.

The phone at his belt rang, and he reached for it. "Eppes."

"Don, where are you?" Charlie asked.

"At your place," he said. "Where are you?"

"I'm at school." There was a pause. "Colby called a few hours ago."

He sat up straighter, dropping his feet to the floor. "What for?"

Charlie sounded annoyed. "He wanted to make sure I knew that Shaun Gillis is out of town and you're free and clear."

Right, that's what he'd forgotten to do while driving all over L.A.: call his family and tell them he wasn't on a killer's hit list anymore. "What's the matter, Chuck? You don't sound happy about it."

"I'm not happy that the FBI had to call and tell me instead of my own brother." He heard the creak of Charlie's desk chair, as if he were standing up. "You didn't think I might want to know?"

He let out a gusty sigh. "Look, it's been a rough day, okay? I came over and no one was home. I figured I'd tell you when you got here."

There was a pause. Then Charlie said, sounding less agitated, "Okay, I guess I understand."

"How long d'you think you're going to be there?"

A frustrated sigh. "I have to get this paper done tonight so my collaborator in London can submit it tomorrow…it'll be at least another four hours."

He looked at his watch. "Well, I don't think I'm staying here till one, so I'll see you tomorrow or something."

"Okay." Charlie cleared his throat. "I, uh, I'm glad that you're safe, Don."

A smile curled the corners of his mouth. "Yeah, me too, buddy. Have fun with your paper."

There was a soft snort. "Sure thing. See ya."

He closed the phone and stuck it back on his belt. Yawning, he rose from the couch and headed for the kitchen, figuring he could sneak another square of cake and rearrange the remaining pieces so no one noticed. At least Charlie's academic work hadn't been halted by his illicit collaboration with Pakistani academics. He frowned as he wondered for a moment if he needed to be worried about this project with someone in the UK.

Don was still pondering this as he started to push open the door to the kitchen. Then across the darkened room, he thought he saw movement -- right outside the house. He instinctively dropped down into a crouch, inching forward until he could look out of the kitchen window at the driveway, his hand down at his side reaching for the weapon that he'd thankfully left on when he came through the front door. He watched carefully, but nothing happened. _Probably seeing things, Eppes. _

He was about to berate himself for being paranoid when his ears caught something off to the right. It was the _snick_ of a car door being opened, followed by a faint light briefly spilling over the driveway. Someone was climbing inside his Suburban, parked on the far side of the driveway.

He quietly dashed back to the dining room and, still in a crouch, peered out of the window next to the piano. There sat his SUV, rear door slightly ajar. As he watched, the door quietly closed.

Don dropped back from the window, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. What kind of idiot car thief went for a vehicle with government plates? _No, what kind of idiot car thief gets in the back seat?_ he thought, and a chill ran down his spine. He firmly shook his head. Shaun Gillis was in Las Vegas, or wherever the hell he'd flown to from there. He was _not_ in L.A., and he was certainly _not_ lying in wait in Don's SUV.

He stepped away from the window and back to the living room, where he whipped out his phone and paused with one finger over the speed dial. If he called this in, and it turned out to be nothing, he was going to be the butt of jokes for weeks.

If he didn't call it in, the consequences could be a lot worse.

Suddenly the phone vibrated in his hand and he punched the button. "Eppes," he said softly.

"Don, we've got a problem." It was Colby and he sounded tired.

"No kidding," he replied under his breath. "What is it?"

"Our ballistics guys finally got the results from the San Pedro shooting. Turns out it wasn't Gillis's gun. She wasn't his target."

He raised his head to look towards the driveway, as if he could see through the walls and into the interior of the vehicle outside, while his mind raced. Las Vegas was only four hours away: plenty of time for Gillis to rent a different vehicle under another name and make the drive back across the desert while the FBI was looking for him in another state. "I need you guys to get here as fast as you can," he said rapidly and quietly. "I'm at Charlie's house."

"Don?" The tiredness had been replaced with worry. "What's going on?"

He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes till ten. Alan wasn't likely to arrive at ten on the dot, but there was no way he was allowing the possibility of his father walking into a confrontation with Shaun Gillis. And since the older man usually kept his cell off when he wasn't using it to make a call, Don didn't have any way of warning him. "I think I just saw someone climb in my car. It might be Gillis."

"Whoa." There were sounds in the background of Colby scrambling to his feet and slamming desk drawers. "Get out of there, Don."

"Can't -- I don't know when Dad's coming back." He paused. "Just hurry, okay?"

"We'll be there in fifteen," Colby promised, hanging up.

Don folded the phone shut and hoped he'd just made a paranoid fool of himself.

Five minutes later, his hopes were dashed. Heart in his throat, he'd moseyed from the back door out to the garage, taking his time and making sure anyone in the SUV could get a good look at him. Once inside, he'd turned on the light and moved around, again fighting the instincts that told him to stop making such a good target of himself. On the bright side, if it really was Gillis and he'd secreted himself in Don's car to try and abduct him rather than coming into the house, that meant he wasn't keen on taking a shot that the neighbors might hear. Still, it was hard to force himself to move around and make noises when he had good reason to believe that there was a killer only a few yards away.

The garage door faced the driveway, with a side door perpendicular to the main façade. After a minute or two of making himself heard, he ducked down behind a pile of boxes near the side door, finally drawing his weapon and surprised at how much comfort the heft of it gave him. He crouched down, prepared to wait.

As it turned out, it didn't take long. He saw the shadow thrown by the outside yard light before he saw the person, but the gun leading the way into the garage was definitely a .22. And the man holding it was definitely Shaun Gillis.

Don swallowed back his nerves and forced himself to wait another moment. Once Gillis was inside and had moved a few more steps, he would be past Don's hiding place, but not yet confused as to where Don had gone to. The killer took one slow step, and then another. One more --

And Don shot to his feet and extended his weapon so the barrel rested right at the back of Gillis's neck. "Drop it," he snapped.

Neither of them moved for a moment. Then Gillis slowly raised his hands, the Browning in his right hand pointed towards the ceiling. Don snatched it and ejected the magazine, tossing it away while he jammed the empty pistol into the back of his waistband. His heart was racing, adrenaline sharpening his senses, making the wind rustling the trees outside that much louder, the smell of chalk that much stronger. He risked a quick glance to his watch. Ten minutes till Colby and David showed up. "Hands on top of your head," he commanded.

Gillis obeyed without a word. With his back to Don, he couldn't see the other man's face. But looking straight ahead, he could see his reflection in the side window and he realized with a chill how carefully the killer was watching him. "Kneel down," he barked, pressing harder with the gun. "Cross your ankles." He knew some of the tension was bleeding through into his voice; he could hear how taut it was, and he knew the other man would hear it and recognize it for the fear it symbolized. He added, "You made a mistake, Gillis. Shoulda been more quiet getting into the car; I would have never known you were there."

The man slowly dropped to one knee as Don's gun tracked downwards, now aimed at his back. He reached behind him for his handcuffs. "Hands behind your back," he said, grabbing Gillis's left arm to help him along. He snapped the cuff around his left wrist and was reaching for the right when it happened.

A sudden gust of wind whistled through the garage and tapped a tree branch against the roof of the house. The unexpected sound distracted Don enough for Gillis to gain the advantage, and a few seconds later Don was flat on his back, looking up into the barrel of his gun and the satisfied expression on the man who held it.

A bolt of pure terror shot through him. This really was why Gillis was still in town -- his team had been right.

Shaun Gillis was here to kill him.

"What are you waiting for?" he growled with all the bravado he could muster, wishing he hadn't been so careful about unloading the Browning before taking possession of it. There was still the backup piece at his ankle, but it was going to take something more than a tree branch to get Gillis's attention away from him.

He tried everything he could think of, but he didn't have much to work with. He felt like a trapped animal watching the hunter approach, knowing that Gillis was enjoying the fear that he could no longer keep completely off his face, the fear that was paralyzing him where he lay.

He hoped his teammates would get here before Alan did; better that they find him than his own father. And one final, grim thought crossed his mind.

_At least it'll be quick._

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	12. Chapter 12

Now, you didn't think I was going to stop the pattern of flashbacks just because of the cliffhanger, did you? ;)

Disclaimer and acknowledgments remain in the prologue, unless this jumping back and forth in time has shaken them loose.

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April 3, 2000  
FBI Academy  
Quantico, VA

"Okay, so, after two months of telling you to never, ever, go anywhere without your partner, for the next couple of classes, we're going to talk about what happens if you're on your own." Leaning against the table at the front of the classroom, arms crossed over his chest, Don looked around at his charges. There were twenty-seven men and women, down from the thirty-two who had started nine weeks ago. They still put their name cards up at their assigned desks at the start of every class, even though he'd known their names for a while and generally referred to them by only their surnames. Like the navy shirts and khaki pants they all wore, it was part of the routine, part of the discipline they were here to learn.

"How often does that happen?" asked Adam Santos from the front row. He kept reminding Don of Charlie. Maybe it was the curly hair, or maybe it was the fact that he asked so many questions.

"More often than you'd think. Anyone got an idea of why you might be facing down a suspect on your own?"

Anna Brown raised her hand from a seat at the side of the room. "If your partner was incapacitated."

"Or lost." The jibe came from Richard Simon, a young man who'd been partnered with Brown on the occasion when they spent half an hour longer than they should have finding their way through the map-reading course.

Before the laughter could start, Don cut in, "Okay, anyone else?" giving Simon a quick, stern look.

"What if someone was after you and they, like, followed you until you were alone?" The question came from an Asian guy named Sam Lee who had clearly watched too many movies and TV shows before coming to the Academy. At first glance, he was a likely washout. On the other hand, Don had seen him on the recruits' first day, when "roll call" was held.

Trainees at Quantico were assigned their classroom seats. On the very first day, the initial lecture they heard after a welcoming speech was a frank discussion of the dangers of the job. It was graphically illustrated with video of an agent being shot and killed in the line of duty, and physically illustrated with that agent's service weapon, a Glock with a bullet hole in the middle of it. At the end of the lecture, the students were told to look in the notebooks they'd been issued and to stand up if theirs held a slip of paper with a name on it. Eighteen of the thirty-two did so, and they read the names aloud into a quiet room. When they were done, none of them were surprised when the instructor informed them that all eighteen had been killed in the line of duty. What was more unnerving to hear was that those were the exact seats each of those eighteen people had sat in during their own training at Quantico.

One of the more experienced instructors had told Don later that the first to drop out was usually one of those eighteen, having been faced directly with their mortality through a symbolic tie to a dead agent. He remembered seeing more than a few faces pale after the exercise, including Lee's. He also remembered the young man briefly closing his eyes and then straightening in his seat, as if determined to live up to the legacy they had been introduced to. It made a strange contrast to the references he kept making to scenarios much more common to Hollywood than real life.

"_We're_ the ones who are after people, Sam, not the other way around." The annoyed response came from a woman with long brown hair and exotic-looking eyes who seemed to listen the most eagerly when Don told stories about his real-life experiences. "Agent Eppes, you mean situations in the field, right?"

He spread his hands. "'The field' can mean a lot of things, Warner. But yeah, that's generally where physical confrontations happen. Disagreements within the office don't usually involve hand-to-hand."

That got a round of laughter. "But what about someone, you know, going postal?" It was Lee again.

Don raised his eyebrows. "That's not likely to happen in an FBI office," he replied, "but I suppose it's possible. You'd hardly be on your own, though." He stood up from the desk and moved towards the clear area next to the table, motioning to Warner and Santos. "This is more like what I'm talking about."

For the next hour, he had them first demonstrate a skill they'd learned for subduing a suspect; then he removed one of the trainees from the equation and asked the remaining one what they'd do differently without the backup. Most of them had a pretty good idea of the principle, but he overpowered more than one with little effort. A couple of them were able to hold their own, including Warner, and he congratulated each one. Those who failed seemed embarrassed enough on their own, so he simply offered suggestions on what to look for and how to keep their minds focused for the next go-around.

The best thing about the timeslot of his class was that it was right before lunch, which meant that going a few minutes over didn't cut into another part of their training. The worst thing was that, since they'd all been working hard since six in the morning, there were more than a few drooping eyelids in the crowd. Even watching your classmates getting thrown to the ground got tiring after a while. Eventually, Don had learned to pair up the people who weren't participating and have them discuss scenarios, even if there wasn't room to practice them between the desks. He wondered if he could pick up any tips from Charlie about how to keep a class awake and engaged. If his little brother could get people to stay awake during a math lecture, surely he could make sure his students were alert when he was talking about something that could save their lives.

He checked his watch. Seven minutes till twelve. "Okay, everyone have a seat," he called. It took a moment for everyone to quiet down, but he started talking over them. "What were the main points today?"

"Don't get caught by yourself," Josh Whitaker snarked from his position in the back of the room.

Don allowed the chuckle that drifted across the room. "Good," he said, pointing a finger at the thirty-something man who'd come to the FBI from a small town police force in Connecticut. "That's an important lesson to remember. What else?"

"It takes a lot of concentration," said Brown thoughtfully. "To keep your attention on the suspect, but also to have eyes in the back of your head in case they have an accomplice." She flushed. "I kept getting distracted by other people in the room."

"That's okay," Don said. "It takes a long time to develop that level of focus, and once you're in the field, everything changes anyway."

"Seems to me the best thing to do is to keep your options open." It was Simon, trying to make up for his earlier less-than-helpful contribution. "I mean, be ready for anything that might happen, instead of having a specific plan in mind."

Don flashed a quick smile at the young man. "That's exactly right. I'm not up here telling you what you must do in a given situation, 'cause every situation is different. I'm giving you some options that are most likely to help, but you have to know when to use them. And there's not much besides experience that will help with that." He'd heard the same thing from his instructors when he was a trainee, and it had pretty much gone in one ear and out the other. Hopefully it would stick with at least one of these kids.

"What about the flying tackle?" It was Whitaker again.

The class laughed and Don joined in with a grin. It had become a running joke after one of his stories about Coop laying out a football-style tackle on a fugitive in the middle of a city park in Austin. It had looked really impressive and it _had_ been successful, but for a couple of weeks Coop had worried that he'd permanently messed up his shoulder. "That's for when you're wearing pads," he replied. "Or the ground is really, really soft." He checked his watch as another round of laughter rippled around the room.

Adam Santos, the studious guy in the front row, was raising his hand. Don nodded at him, and he said, "Are you going to talk about psychological tactics, too?"

"Like what?" he asked, tilting his head slightly to the side.

Santos bounced his pen up and down against his thumb. "Like how to psych yourself up. I mean, we're being taught all this physical stuff, and I know some of it is to train our bodies so we don't have to think about it, but like you keep saying, it's not the same out in the field. We can learn how to wrestle a gun out of someone's hands, but what happens if you get out there and someone points a gun at you and you just...well...freeze?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, that can happen. It's a fine line between respecting what a firearm can do and using your training to get it out of the bad guy's hands. Sure, we'll talk about that in a couple of days. It'll help you get ready for the OC spray."

A couple of them grimaced, and he couldn't blame them. One of the more well-known tests the recruits had to pass was to protect their service weapon from a fellow trainee and then get the trainee spread-eagled on the ground -- all while keeping at least one eye open after getting blasted in the face from four feet away with oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray. There was clearly a fair amount of psychological preparation involved, as anticipation of the test built over the weeks of training. Of course, the test itself served as psych prep: knowing that you could, in fact, wrestle someone to the ground and keep a hold of your weapon while you were half-blind meant you were prepared to actually do that in the field.

"So what was your first time like?" Whitaker called from the back row.

Before he could stop himself, Don raised an eyebrow and deadpanned, "This isn't _that_ kind of class, Whitaker."

The class dissolved into laughter but Don noticed Warner giving him a glare. He inwardly winced. Okay, that could probably be construed as sexual harassment if you looked at it the wrong way. He held out his hands to shush the students. "You guys really want to know?"

A chorus of "yeah"s followed, even though they should all be on their way to the cafeteria. He took a quick look at his watch. _Better make this short, Eppes_. "Okay, so I'm, like, two months out of graduation, and I'm part of a team of about eight people tracking this killer-for-hire in the middle of a crowd." Don was surprised to feel his heart pounding a little faster and he took a deep breath to steady himself. "Somehow he made me, came up behind me and marched me off into an alley."

There was more than one wide pair of eyes in the audience. "What did you do?" Santos asked.

He sighed. "You know, I wish I could say I used some cool moves, broke the guy's grip and saved the day. Instead I made an ass of myself and got much closer to a Browning semi-automatic than I ever wanted to." He put two fingers under his chin, thumb sticking out, and heard a gasp or two from the trainees.

And just like that, he could feel the texture of the brick wall against his back, the pressure of the gun underneath his jaw, could even see Shaun Gillis's face in front of him.

Then he suddenly realized how quiet the room had gone.

He gave them all a self-conscious smile and lowered his hand. "So I did what he told me to do and I got out of it alive. Sometimes you do what you have to to fight another day, even if it doesn't feel right."

"Did you catch him later?" Simon asked eagerly.

He quirked up the corner of his mouth. "Not yet." _But someday I damn well will._

With that, he dismissed the class. He wasn't surprised when Santos came up as the other students were leaving. "You sound like you're glad to be out of the field," he said.

Don shrugged. "When I was behind a desk, all I wanted was to be out there running down the bad guys. When I'd been chasing fugitives for a while, all I wanted was to sit behind a desk." He leaned back on the table top and crossed his legs in front of him. "Some people do better with the same job all the time, others like to mix it up."

"So you think you'll go back in the field?" Warner asked from a few desks back, pausing in packing up her materials.

"Oh, yeah," he replied. "It does get in your blood."

"Besides, you still have to catch that guy," Lee said, bounding down the risers from his seat.

Whitaker turned around as he was about to leave the room and added, "Just be sure you're not by yourself when you do!"

Don smiled. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind." _I'll be sure to have an entire team at my back_, he mentally added. _I'm not going up against that guy on my own._

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	13. Chapter 13

Wow, I'm happy that so many people liked the last chapter. Thanks for not killing me for leaving you hanging a bit longer…

Guess what? Disclaimer and thanks are in the prologue.

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Chapter 7  
July 30, 2008  
Eppes residence

His life wasn't flashing before his eyes, but then again, it never had, from a Boston alleyway thirteen years ago to an old folks' home back in November. On the other hand, he couldn't remember being in a situation like this, where the person holding him at gunpoint hadn't been caught by surprise by a random FBI agent, but had the explicit intent of killing him, Don Eppes. It made him aware that he had absolutely nothing left to lose.

The awful, anticipatory silence was suddenly broken. "Get up," Gillis said, motioning with the gun.

Don eyed him warily. Not about to question anything that kept him alive, he slowly rose to his feet, keeping his hands in view. It occurred to him that the killer's original plan had been to hide in his car, probably to take him somewhere that a gunshot wouldn't attract attention, and he must be trying to get back to that plan. He tried to hold on to that and shake off the dark certainty of a few seconds ago that he was taking his last breaths.

Gillis held up his left hand and shook it a little so that the handcuffs rattled. "Get these off me," he demanded.

He reached behind him and extracted the key from his handcuff pouch, constantly aware of where his captor's eyes were and where his gun was pointed. Unfortunately, they both remained completely focused on him. He held out the key, noting that with the gun in Gillis's right hand and the cuffs on his left, he was going to have to switch hands to be able to free himself.

Or maybe not. The other man took a step forward, then another. Holding the gun so that it was out of easy range but still firmly pointed at Don's midriff, he held out his left hand. Don reached out and fitted the key in the lock, hating that his hands were ever so slightly shaking. When he had the cuffs off, Gillis wordlessly held out his hand, palm up. He placed the key in it, and the other man backed off a few steps. Then he nodded at the handcuffs. "Go ahead, put 'em on. Hands behind you."

Whatever small chance he might have of overpowering the killer would be whittled down to nothing if his hands were restrained. "Why are you doing this?" he asked instead, closing his hands around the metal rings. Gillis had already used them effectively as a weapon; maybe he could return the favor.

"Doing what, exactly?" He almost sounded amused.

Don drew in a quick breath. "Someone else will have this case after me. You can't eliminate the entire FBI."

Gillis's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He jerked his chin towards his service weapon. "Taking away an agent's gun and using it against him. Once is luck, but four times? That's pretty impressive."

The other man let out a soft snort. "I've never taken on a cop or an agent. The risk isn't worth the price."

"Come on, the three other agents who've tracked you were all killed with their own weapons. You're telling me that wasn't your doing?"

"Nope." Gillis shook his head. "This is all about you."

"Then why?" At this point, he was no longer asking questions to stall -- he wanted to know. If they'd been wrong about Gillis seeking revenge on the FBI, then what the hell was he doing here now?

Gillis's mouth turned into a hard line. "I was staying under the radar until you came along. No suspicion from the authorities, no extra precautions necessary, nothing keeping me from doing my job. Then you got all fired up and started putting people on my tail, giving me a reputation for being a risk. It's hard to get a contract when prospective employers know you're wanted by the FBI."

Don was astonished. He'd had no idea that his obsession-driven investigation had actually mattered to anyone but himself. "Obviously it didn't hold you back for long," he said.

He got a hard stare in reply. "I found out a job was going to bring me close to your digs, and I did a little asking around. It's easy to find someone who's willing to pay for a dead Federal agent if you know where to look."

That was hardly surprising. "Thought it wasn't worth the risk," he shot back.

The smile he got in response was as cold as ice. "Yeah, but sometimes I get a certain amount of personal satisfaction out of the job." He paused, letting the words sink in, and then gestured more insistently with the weapon. "C'mon, put the cuffs on, or I'll do it myself."

He reluctantly closed the metal around his left wrist and was moving his hands behind him when the lighting outside suddenly changed. The hum of a motor told him someone had pulled into the driveway, their headlights washing over the exterior of the garage and growing brighter as the car drew nearer. His heart sank. Colby and David wouldn't be so obvious. It had to be Dad or Charlie. The light in the garage would be a clear beacon and they'd walk right in without a clue.

Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse.

Gillis had backed up a step and was looking toward the source of the sound. The garage door stood in the way and there was no window on that side of the building, so there wasn't anything to see. They heard the car door slam, then nothing.

Then faintly, he heard his father's voice and his footsteps on the driveway. "Donnie, is that you?"

Wide-eyed, he glanced at Gillis, who looked slightly uneasy. They only had a few seconds before Alan entered the garage and Don was pretty sure the other man didn't want the complication of an additional captive.

_He_ sure as hell didn't want one, either.

Forcing down his pride, Don looked Gillis in the eye and quietly said one heartfelt word. "Please."

The green eyes narrowed, then flickered towards the door, which was still slightly ajar. Finally, he gave a short nod and raised a finger to his lips, jerking the gun towards the door before pointing it back at him. The message was clear: _Keep quiet, and no one else will get hurt._

Fighting the instincts that urged him not to turn his back on a man with a gun, Don moved towards the door. Behind him, he could hear Gills keeping pace, dashing his hopes of sprinting out the door and slamming it behind him. Gillis moved to the left as they got nearer, taking up a position right behind the door. He leveled the gun at Don and nodded.

A clanking sound caught his attention as he reached for the knob. Snatching up the dangling cuff, he reached for the door and pulled it partially open just as Alan appeared. "Hey, Dad."

"So it _is_ you." He leaned forward. "What are you doing in the garage?"

Don kept a hold of the doorknob on the side Alan couldn't see, making sure the door opened no farther than a couple of feet. "I, uh, thought I heard Charlie out here. Nobody here but me, though."

"I see." Alan looked him up and down. "So I take it your big case is over with?"

"You could say that." Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the gleam of the gun barrel a few feet away, could hear Gillis's breathing, could feel the killer's eyes on his back. "Charlie told you about it?" Somehow he'd never gotten around to making that phone call to tell his dad there was a wanted killer who might be after him. Now, he found himself wishing he had.

"He said you weren't supposed to talk about it, but you wouldn't be by the house for a while and it had nothing to do with you being angry at him." He gave Don a shrewd look. "You boys have me figured out pretty well, you know."

"Well, Dad, you gotta admit you're pretty easy to read." _Now go away_, he thought desperately.

"I'd like to think that's not true, but sadly, I know it is." Alan took a step back, clearly expecting him to follow. "You coming?"

"I, uh, thought I saw some case files that Charlie left lying around," he improvised. "I should probably pick them up and bring them back in."

"Well, if you need some help, I promise not to look," Alan replied, moving forward again.

He managed to restrain himself from shouting "No!", knowing that that would give everything away. Instead he leaned forward, resting his right forearm on the doorframe at eye-level to block Alan's path. "No, it's okay, I got it." Then he shifted his weight, turning his right hip slightly forward.

Don knew his father well. He knew his eyes would automatically shift downwards to the gun that he never liked seeing at his son's hip. He knew that upon seeing the empty holster Alan's brow would furrow in confusion. He would be wondering where the gun was if Don didn't have it; the agent wouldn't have forgotten it at his office or in the car, and he would _never_ leave it lying around the house or the garage. It would take a second or two, but the wheels would turn in his head and, combined with Don's reluctance to let him inside the garage, he would realize that could only mean one thing: _someone else was there, and they had the gun_.

What he didn't know was what would happen next. From where he was hiding on the other side of the door, Gillis could clearly hear anything that either of them said. And if he heard anything out of order, Don had no doubt that he would make his presence -- and that of the gun -- known. So Don kept perfectly still, watching his father's eyes track along the exact route he had predicted, then meeting his with a clear question in their depths.

Without moving his head, he deliberately looked towards his left, at the door, and then back. From his position, Gillis wouldn't be able see his face, and so with his eyes intent on his father's, he mouthed, _Go. Now._

Alan blinked and took a step back. His face went a shade paler as he looked again at the empty holster, then at the door. But his voice was rock-steady as he said, "Well, then, I won't bother you any more, son. If you need a break, there's a few pieces of carrot cake in the fridge."

"I'll keep that in mind," Don said, lowering his arm. _Now come on, Dad, get out of here_.

Alan cleared his throat and took another step back. "Do you, ah, have any idea how long you'll be out here?"

Don understood the question, but he had absolutely no idea what Gillis was going to do now. The only answer he could make was, "No."

Alan nodded. "Well, then, if I don't see you before I turn in, good night." In contrast to his calm words, Don saw the frightened look on his face and it suddenly occurred to him that he needed to give his father one more piece of information.

"Okay, g'night." He paused, then said, "Say, did the Dodgers end up winning?"

Alan turned back, confusion on his face. Don could read his thoughts as if a word balloon was floating over his head. _You're asking me about baseball at a time like this?_ Out loud, he said slowly, "I think so. I didn't hear the end of the game."

"That's good." He looked intently at his father, but forced his voice to stay light, as if he really were talking about a ballgame. "They were counting on their relief pitching to come through."

Alan's brow stayed furrowed for a moment before clearing. "Yes, well, they have a good team this year. Lots of players they can count on." His knowing look meant that he understood the message loud and clear.

He nodded back and hoped his eyes weren't reflecting what he was feeling: fear that this might well be the last time his father saw him alive. He swallowed. "See you in a bit." _God, I hope so._

Closing the door, he wasn't surprised when Gillis instantly moved behind him, the Glock jabbing into his lower back and the other hand twisting his arm up behind him, immobilizing him against the door. They waited in silence as the sound of Alan's footsteps retreated across the driveway. When he heard the slam of the back screen door, Don felt his shoulders relax a little, despite his own desperate situation. He could handle danger to himself -- or at least be prepared to deal with the consequences of failing. But at this point, his own safety was his second priority. All he wanted to know was that Gillis was unaware that any significant information had passed between himself and his father.

That, and he wanted to know where the hell his team was. Surely fifteen minutes had passed since Colby's phone call.

He could feel Gillis removing the Browning from the back of his waistband, and then the other man started patting him down. Don grimaced when the backup weapon at his ankle was discovered and taken away as well. Then a hand on his shoulder spun him around and shoved him back against the door.

Gillis backed off and eyed him closely, tucking away his own empty pistol and tossing Don's .22 across the garage, where it landed with a thump on the worn-out sofa. Then he jerked his head to the side, towards the house, and spoke quietly. "I'll leave him out of this as long as you do exactly what I say."

Don stared grimly back at him, eyes flicking down to the steady grip the other man had on his gun. At this point, he didn't think he had much choice about doing what the other man wanted, and based on past experience, he believed that he would leave any bystanders out of it. Besides, if they were going somewhere, once they were out of range of the house he had no qualms about going back on his word. Not when his life was hanging in the balance. "Fine," he snapped.

The corner of Gillis's mouth turned up. "Good. You can start with the handcuffs."

Without a word, Don put his hands behind him and closed the metal bracelet around his right wrist. He felt a brief flare of panic as he tested his range of motion and fully realized how vulnerable this made him. There was no way he was going to be able to get out of this on his own now. His last words to his father rang through his head.

_That relief pitching had better come through._

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	14. Chapter 14

What time is it, kids? It's flashback time!

Kidding—even I couldn't stand another interruption at this point. It's all present-day from here on out...

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Once Don was done cuffing his hands behind him, he raised his head and looked back at his captor. "Now what?" he asked, careful to keep his voice down. If they waited here long enough, Colby and David would show up, hopefully with enough agents to surround the place and force Gillis into surrendering. On the other hand, if he stalled too obviously, the killer might guess something was up and go back on his agreement to leave Alan alone. That left a pretty fine line to walk.

Gillis nodded towards the garage door. "We wait to make sure everything's clear. Then we're taking your car."

Don shifted his arms to the side so the handcuffs were visible. "Might look strange if anyone sees me walking down the driveway like this."

"Then it's your job to make sure no one does. Unless you want a third person along for the ride." The menace in his tone was unmistakable, and the hair on the back of Don's neck stood up.

"Fine," he growled. He twisted his hands forward and dug into his pocket for the car keys, dropping them on the floor and stepping back so Gillis wouldn't think he was trying anything.

If he was expecting a phalanx of agents to greet them when they stepped out of the garage a few minutes later, he was disappointed. They made their way to the Suburban without incident. Don was forced to climb in through the driver's seat and over the center console, a tricky maneuver even if his hands had been free to use for balance. Gillis climbed in after him and stuck the key in the ignition, the gun in his left hand aimed across the front seat at Don. "I'd tell you to fasten your seatbelt, but, well…"

Don glared at him, shifting around to try and keep his cuffed hands from digging into his back. _Just get us out of here so no one else is in the line of fire,_ he thought urgently.

They slowly backed down the driveway, lights still off. Out the side mirror, Don could see a car sitting across the street that looked remarkably like David's. His heart leaped, and he felt a ray of hope for the first time since being overpowered. He shot a quick glance at Gillis to see if the man had noticed anything out of the ordinary, but he was concentrating on backing out onto the street.

Suddenly, there was a blur of activity. Headlights flashed on as two black SUVs roared to life and came to a full stop in the street right behind them. Their Suburban jerked to a halt, brakes protesting with a screech. Don moved towards the door, then cursed as he realized there was no way he could open it. Turning back to his left, he saw Gillis swiftly reaching across the front seat, and his heart leaped into his throat.

There was nowhere to go as the Glock shot up and came to a stop right against his temple.

He froze in place, right shoulder pressing up against the door, eyes locked on the other man and ears attuned to the cacophony of shouts from outside that mostly consisted of "FBI!" and "Put it down!" Beside him, Gillis was shifting the SUV into park, his left arm stretched across his body to hold the gun up to Don's head. Then he carefully reached up and changed hands on the gun, never taking his eyes or his aim off his captive.

Outside the window, Don could hear Colby yelling through the glass. Past Gillis, he saw David crouching next to the hood, arms extended, service weapon leveled at the driver. The slamming of car doors behind them meant there were more agents on the way.

But within the vehicle, it was silent.

"You'd better roll down the windows," Don finally said, breathing as though he had just run a mile. With his head and eyes angled as they were, the dark shape of the gun was taking up nearly half his field of vision, making it hard to concentrate on anything else. "They're going to want to talk, and the glass won't protect you anyway."

"Doesn't matter so much what they want," came the reply, sounding slightly rattled. "I'm the one with the hostage."

"Won't do you much good if you don't make any demands," Don replied.

"Shut up," Gillis snapped. "You want me to blow your head off right here?"

Don pressed his lips together. "Not particularly," he muttered.

There was another pause. Finally Gillis reached for the console on the door, and the driver's side window slid down an inch. "Get that car out of the way," he barked at David.

"We can't do that until you let him go," David calmly replied without moving.

The gun pressed harder against Don's head. "Tell them," Gillis insisted.

Don swallowed. "Doesn't matter what I tell them," he said. "I'm not the one in charge right now."

Gillis snorted. "Screw your damn protocols. If you tell them to back off, they'll do it."

"And then what? You think they're going to let you pull out of the driveway and head off wherever you want? They're not going to negotiate with you, not even for an agent." Don was proud of how steady his voice was. He knew the standard line well and had said it half a dozen times to suspects.

It was a lot harder to say it in reference to himself.

"We'll see about that." Gillis reached over and punched a button. Don could hear the passenger side window behind him rolling down a short distance. "You any more interested in saving your boss's life than this guy is?" he called.

"Depends on what you want," Colby answered warily. Don turned his head a fraction of an inch and cast his eyes to the right as far as he could. The younger agent had his weapon drawn, but pointed at the ground, since there was no way he could bring it to bear on the gunman without Don being in his line of fire. He couldn't make out Colby's face, but the grim tone of his voice was clear.

As he looked back towards Gillis, he could see dark-clad figures moving into position around the garage, the light from the house gleaming off the rifle barrels pointing in their direction. He hoped his father and the neighbors were safely locked inside their houses in case any stray rounds went flying. At this point, it was hard to see how this could end without any shots being fired.

He saw his captor looking around and figured he would notice the FBI team as well. "Just give it up," he said. "You're not going anywhere, with or without me."

The other man let out a snort. "You're telling me to turn myself in? You know how fast they'll stick me with a needle?"

"Didn't you tell me once that no one would be sorry about your targets? That there was nothing heroic in trying to save them? Juries don't give out the death penalty for people like that." He took a quick breath. "But they do for FBI agents. You haven't killed any law enforcement officers yet, Gillis. Don't start now."

There was a long pause. Don could feel his heart thumping painfully in his chest. He hoped that the silence meant he had Gillis thinking. But then the other man said, "Problem is, my contract is pretty much iron-clad. If I'm in jail and you're still alive, then I won't be for long."

"We can put you in protective custody," David said from outside the window in his best promise-the-bad-guys-anything tone.

"Trust me, it doesn't matter for these people," Gillis said. "Whether I pull this trigger or not, I'm dead either way."

"You could let him go and we could shoot you anyway," Colby said dryly.

Don would have glared at his teammate if he had dared to move his head. But to his surprise, Gillis was chuckling. "Cute, agent. No, what's going to happen is that you're going to let both of us by. Once we get away free and clear, then I let Agent Eppes go. Otherwise, you're looking for a new boss."

"That wasn't your plan a few minutes ago," Don objected.

The other man turned to face him. "Things change. I think it's fair to say that right now, what we both want is to get out of here in one piece."

Slowly, carefully, Don turned his head to the side so he could really look at his captor, the gun tracking around as he did so that it was now pressing against the edge of his forehead. The intense stare from those green eyes made it clear that the words had been deliberately chosen to echo the first encounter they'd had, when Gillis had let him go after they were well outside of the city. Could he really trust him to do it again?

Not if what he had just said about his employer was true. But that wouldn't leave them with any room to negotiate at all. And since Gillis's whole reason for being here was to put a bullet in him, he wouldn't be surprised if the killer pulled the trigger if he felt trapped.

So he made a split-second decision that could well be the most important one of his life. "Guys, he means it." He shifted his gaze past the man in the driver's seat to David. "Let us pass," he said, looking intently at the younger agent.

To Gillis, the sharp indrawn breath that David gave would sound like disagreement with his boss's command. At least, that's what Don hoped. To him, it was confirmation of a message received. There were certain codes that agents had worked out in case of situations like this one, ways to appear to comply while indicating something else. If Don had said, "Let us go," or "Let us by," he would have meant it. But this way, it was the appearance of letting them go that he was after, while letting his teammates know he had no intention of letting Gillis go anywhere.

David hesitated for a moment, his eyes flickering back and forth between the two occupants of the SUV, both of whom were impatiently watching him. Finally, he pressed his lips together and took a step back, lowering his weapon. "Understood," he said, giving Don a tiny nod.

"Good." Gillis turned his head and looked past Don, out the passenger window. "And you?"

He could hear a scraping sound behind him as Colby holstered his gun. "I'll notify the rest of the team," he said. He stepped back and to his left, and Don heard him speaking into his radio unit. "All units stand down. Warner, back up the car."

They waited for a tense moment while one of the vehicles in the street rolled in reverse, leaving a clear space for them to access the street. Don's head was still turned towards the driver's seat, so he could see the hesitation on Gillis's face as he tried to figure out how he was going to reach around the steering wheel and shift gears with his left hand. The pressure of the gun against his head had momentarily eased, meaning that it was now or never. He looked out the driver's side window at David, who was watching him closely. _Three,_ he mouthed.

One more careful check that Gillis was distracted. _Two._

David nodded over the top of the vehicle, then at him, and he tensed his muscles, ready to move. _One._

Behind him, the car door flew open and strong hands grabbed at his right arm and the back of his shirt. He was already moving in that direction, rolling towards where the door had been a second earlier, ducking his head away from the gun as he dove for the ground. Colby was crouched low behind the back door, only his arms sticking out to yank Don to safety. All he had to do was hit the asphalt with his shoulder, knowing David would have already re-drawn his Glock and have it trained on Gillis.

The bark of his own weapon and the bolt of fire ripping through his left thigh happened simultaneously. The pain hit him like a sledgehammer, and rather than being able to neatly tuck and roll onto the pavement, it was only Colby's quick reflexes that prevented him from slamming face first onto the driveway. He couldn't hold back a cry of pain as he was pulled the rest of the way out of the Suburban and onto his stomach, his leg jarring against the edge of the door frame and then on the ground.

A second shot sounded, and a sharp grunt came from the driver's seat. He could hear David shouting, "Put it down! Right now!"

There was a heavy weight on him and he tried to fight it off, but a hand protectively held his head in place. "Don't move, Don," came Colby's voice in his ear. He realized the other man was shielding him with his body while whatever was going down on the other side of the Suburban finished going down. The rush of footsteps told him there were multiple agents racing to the scene, more than his three teammates. One of them opened the passenger side door wider and aimed his service weapon across the front seat, practically standing over him and Colby.

Don closed his eyes and forced himself to pay attention to the pain shooting through his leg. It hurt in the back, of course, where he'd been hit, but he could distinguish a different source of agony in the front, where his thigh was being pressed into the ground. He took that as a good sign: a through-and-through was better than having the bullet still inside him. Of course, that assumed nothing vital had been nicked on the way through. He hoped the sudden dizziness passing over him was the adrenaline running out and not blood loss. _Really don't want to bleed to death on my own driveway._

A few seconds later, he heard David call out, "Clear!" Instantly, Colby's weight was gone, and he felt hands prodding at his leg. He let out a sharp hiss, raising his head in protest. "Sorry," Colby murmured, "but I need to get a look."

"What, you didn't call paramedics along with the SWAT team?" he retorted. Taking a shallow breath, he went on, "I mean, I was hoping for backup, but it looks like you brought the entire field office."

Colby kept talking, presumably to distract him from the poking and prodding he was doing. "As soon as your dad called my cell and said somebody was holding you in the garage, we called in everyone we could think of, so they should be here any minute. If it wasn't for the damn ball game letting out, we'd have been here at least five minutes earlier." The younger agent leaned forward, pressing one hand to each side of Don's leg, his voice losing some of its tension as he spoke. "Good news is, it went straight through, and you're not bleeding enough to be scary."

He closed his eyes and laid his head down on the asphalt, tiny pebbles digging into his forehead. "Good," he muttered. "Still hurts like a son of a bitch." At least he could rest for a moment, now that things were under control.

Above him, he heard another familiar voice. "Thought you might want this," David was saying, and Don craned his neck to see him inserting a key into the handcuffs behind his back. He let out a grateful sigh as his hands were freed, slowly stretching his arms out to the side and then above his head. All of a sudden, he was really tired. "Gillis?" he asked.

"Winged 'em in the shoulder," David replied, nodding towards the other side of the car. "They're already taking him in."

The sound of sirens caught his ears, and he slowly looked up to see an ambulance coming to a halt at the end of the driveway, its flashing lights bathing the scene in a series of strange colors. If there were any neighbors not already looking out the windows, this would bring them out for sure. "David," he said, alarmed at how much effort it was taking him to talk, "go -- go tell Dad I'm okay, would you?"

"Sure thing, Don," came the gentle reply. He felt a warm hand on his shoulder and put his head back down on the ground. Yep, everything was under control. And so whether it was loss of blood or sheer exhaustion that was greying the corners of his vision, he closed his eyes and gave into it, for once trusting his team to take care of him and everything else.

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	15. Chapter 15

Thanks for your comments, everyone; I really appreciate them all. See ya next time around!

Still don't own 'em, still having only fun and not profit with 'em. Still grateful to Lady Shelley, Susan, Kiki, and ritt.

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Chapter 8  
July 31, 2008  
Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena

It wasn't a very loud noise, but it was enough to make Don's eyes fly open and his head come up off the pillow. He blinked and looked around, disoriented. Information slowly filtered in: he was still in a hospital bed with his leg swathed in bandages, Charlie was still asleep on a cot at the far side of the room, and his sheepish-looking father was closing the slightly-squeaky door.

"Sorry," Alan rumbled in a low voice. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"S'okay," he said, leaning forward a bit. Alan stepped over and helped him raise the bed. "How long was I out this time?"

"No more than an hour. I spoke to your doctor out in the hallway. He says the best thing for you to do is get some rest." His father helped to prop him up with a few pillows before pulling the orange plastic chair up to the edge of the bed.

"Did he say how soon I can get out of here?" Not that he was ready to go jogging down the halls, but if all he had to do was rest, he could do that at home as easily as here.

"That's funny -- somehow I must have forgotten to ask him that question." Alan favored him with a stern look. "You shouldn't be worrying about that yet."

"I'm fine, Dad." He gestured down at his leg. "I remember that much of what the doctor said this morning."

"Actually, I seem to recall him saying that you were doing pretty good for someone with two holes in his leg, which you have to admit is an unusual condition."

Defeated, he dropped his head back against the pillow. "Yeah, can't say that I've experienced that one before."

"I suppose I should be grateful for that," Alan muttered.

When Don rolled his head to the side to look at him, he was surprised at the anger on his father's face. His eyebrows lowered as he lifted his head again. "What is it?"

Alan frowned. With a quick glance at Charlie, he said quietly, "You knew that I would be upset if I knew that you were chasing Shaun Gillis again. I remember you telling us about him way back on your very first assignment, and even then we were sure you weren't telling us the whole story. I would understand if it was all FBI business, but since Charlie apparently knew, it must not have been confidential."

He sighed. "I wasn't trying to keep anything from you. I just forgot." _Mostly._ "It's been a tough couple of weeks."

"Mm-hmm." Alan watched him for a moment longer, as if waiting for him to confess more. When he didn't, he went on, "I suppose I'm also upset that you took as big a risk as you did."

"What do you mean?" he asked, wondering how much his father knew of what had transpired with Gillis. His teammates better not have shared any details about what had happened in the driveway, or he'd have them on the most mind-numbing surveillance assignment he could find for the next month. It hadn't crossed his mind until later that if the automatic locks on the Suburban had been engaged, things would have turned out very differently.

"Trusting your old man like that." Alan's gaze was serious. "I'm not trained like a federal agent, Donnie. I don't know what I'm supposed to do when my son tells me there's a man lurking in my garage holding him hostage."

"Look, it's not like I had much choice," he replied darkly. "He said he'd leave you alone as long -- " He broke off and pressed his lips together instead of filling in the rest of the sentence.

"As long as you went along with him?" Alan filled in, his tone rising sharply. "You believed him?"

"It wasn't a question of believing him, Dad. I didn't have a choice," he repeated more stridently, looking the older man in the eye and tamping down the remembered fear at being literally the only thing standing between his father and a hired killer. Then he sighed and said quietly, "I'm sorry I had to put you through that."

"I think you're lucky I was there," Alan replied, his expression turning bleak. "Otherwise he'd have driven off with you and no one would have ever known what happened."

Don picked at the fraying edge of the hospital blanket before letting out a soft snort as something occurred to him. "You know, if you want to talk like that, it's a good thing you make such great carrot cake."

"Actually, that was my carrot cake," Charlie spoke up from across the room, and Don's head jerked up. "And what does it have to do with anything?"

He started to apologize for waking Charlie up but his brother was waving him off, yawning as he sat up and threw his legs over the side of the cot. "What time is it, three? If I sleep any more, I'll throw off my biorhythms completely." He rubbed his eyes and looked so much like a sleepy child that Don and Alan both smiled when he raised his head. "What?"

"Nothing, buddy." He shifted around a little, trying to sit up straighter.

"So what's this about Charlie's carrot cake?" Alan asked, turning back to him.

_Damn, he didn't forget._ He let out a short sigh. "If I hadn't gone back to the kitchen for a second piece, I wouldn't have seen Gillis getting in my car. Probably never would have known he was there."

"Damn," Charlie breathed out. He blinked a few times and then said, "See, I told you I could still be useful to you."

The corner of Don's mouth turned up. "Yeah, I guess you can."

There was a knock at the door, and it opened a few inches. "Are we interrupting?" Colby asked, poking his head inside.

"Nah, come on in," Don said, ignoring the look he was sure his father was giving him at this excuse for avoiding the current topic of conversation.

Colby pushed the door farther open and entered, David close on his heels. "Hi, Charlie. Hey, Alan," he said, David echoing the greeting.

Alan rose from his chair and firmly shook both of their hands. "Thank you," he said. "For responding so quickly and for getting Don out of there in one piece."

"No problem," David said with a slightly embarrassed smile.

Colby shrugged one shoulder. "It'd be too much work to break in a new boss, and we're basically lazy."

"Thanks, guys," Don drawled, and they grinned.

Silence fell for a moment. Then Charlie abruptly stood up. "Um, Dad, maybe we should go get some coffee or something."

Alan's brow furrowed for a moment, and then he looked back and forth between the three agents. "Right. You boys probably want to talk." He stopped and put a hand to his head. "'You boys.' Like you're teenagers and not grown men."

Don smiled. "Hey, see if you can find out from the doctor how much longer I'm stuck here, would you?"

Alan turned and gave him a sharp look. "You're stuck here as long as he says you are and not a moment less."

He held up his hands. "Whatever you say, Dad."

Charlie gave a snort, and the other four turned to look at him. It was his turn to put up his hands in surrender. "I'll just be out in the hall," he said, slipping past Colby and David and out the door. Alan followed and David closed the door behind him.

"So what's up?" Don asked, gesturing to the available seating.

David lowered himself into the olive green plastic chair against the wall. "We should be asking you that," he said, nodding at Don's leg.

He waved a hand. "Colby had it right at the scene: straight through, no big deal. I guess they're running some tests to make sure everything's kosher, but all I really need is some rest."

"I would imagine that rest is going to come with some hovering," David said, nodding back towards where Alan and Charlie had gone.

Don smiled ruefully. "Can't say that I blame them, you know?" When they both nodded, he went on, "So what brings you here?"

"Besides making sure we still have a boss?" Colby asked. At Don's mock glare, he went on, "We, uh, thought you might want to know what's been going on at the office."

He raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

"It's just an update," David said. "For one, you'll be happy to know that Shaun Gillis has become surprisingly talkative. He's been naming a few of the people who've hired him over the years." He quirked up the corner of his mouth. "Guess he figured that if he was going down, he might as well take some others with him."

"Given some of these names, we'll be lucky if any of them are still alive to prosecute," Colby added.

"What about the one here in L.A.?" Don asked, trying to sound merely curious rather than scared to death at the prospect of someone having a price on his head.

The two agents exchanged a look. "Associates of Yuri Koverchenko," David reluctantly said. "Same ones we tangled with a couple of years ago."

"Oh man." Don let his head fall back against the pillow. He already felt bad about chewing them out for a murder victim who wasn't their fault and now it turned out they had both been right to worry about his safety -- if for completely different reasons. After a moment, he said, "So I guess that means both of you get a free 'I told you so' card."

Colby shook his head. "I jumped to conclusions on the three other agents, Don. Nothing to be proud of."

"And this group Gillis went to was _not_ the same Russian mafia he'd been working for all along," David added. "Just like Amita said."

"Okay, so you put two and two together and came up with four and a half." He noticed the small smiles on their faces and went on, "Thing is, I'm more than willing to trust my own instincts on a case like this." He looked at both of them in turn, all levity gone. "I should be willing to trust yours as well. And I'm sorry I didn't."

There. Bradford would be really proud of him for making that statement. Even if it was a year late.

"Hey, no biggie." Colby sat down at the foot of the bed. "I mean, a year ago at this time you thought I was a spy."

"A year ago you _were_ a spy," David tossed at him, but in a teasing tone.

"Potato, po-tah-to," Colby replied, a faint grin playing around the corners of his mouth. Don couldn't help but smile. It was good to see these two back to where they had been before Taylor Ashby and his Janus List came along.

David cocked his head to the side. "You know, when I first joined your team, Don, _you_ thought I was a spy for Merrick. Remember that?"

"No kidding?" Colby said. "Guess some people just have a suspicious nature."

"Guess some people learn it on the job," Don retorted, thinking back over his encounters with Shaun Gillis and the colleagues who'd either deliberately or inadvertently made it impossible to catch him. Then he admitted reluctantly, "Some people aren't too good at relying on anyone but themselves."

"Eh, even an old dog can learn new tricks," Colby said, eyes twinkling.

"Hey, who are you calling old, Granger?" Don said, pretending to be insulted.

The younger man grinned. "Sure, he doesn't mind the 'dog' part…"

They were still chuckling when the door opened again. "Everything okay in here?" Alan asked.

"Yeah, Dad, c'mon back." He waved his family inside. "These guys have had enough of a break anyway."

"Jeez, Don, cracking the whip already?" Charlie plopped down on the cot and leaned back against the wall. "They don't get a day off for saving your life?"

"We don't really get days off," Colby said as he rose to his feet. "Unless we're lying around in bed, that is," he added as he gestured at Don.

"Believe me, I'd rather not be," Don replied. "There's plenty of work waiting for me already."

"That's for sure," David replied. He lightly clapped Don's shoulder and stood up. "And on that note, we'd better get back to it."

As the two agents said their farewells and Alan ushered them out, Don stared across the room for a moment, chewing over what had happened over the last few days. It had been a close thing, that was for sure. He thought of Shaun Gillis, now behind bars and almost certainly destined to be there the rest of his life. Then he thought of Yuri Koverchenko's colleagues, and how even if they weren't out for his blood, he was probably going to have to deal with them at some point.

Then something else occurred to him and a faint smile rose to his face. "Hey, Charlie, what would you do if you ever solved P vs. NP?"

Alan raised his eyebrows as he looked back and forth between the two brothers. Charlie grinned, clearly understanding the question. "You mean after I spent the million dollars?"

"Yeah, after that, wise guy."

He shrugged. "There's six other Millennium Problems. Well, five, now that Perelman's solved the Poincare conjecture, but that still should keep me busy for a while."

"So it just keeps going, huh?" That was an exhausting thought. Accurate, but exhausting.

"That's why you have to love your job," Charlie answered.

"I guess so," he sighed. And he did -- most days. The last few weeks had reminded him of the good and the bad parts of his job, and it would continue to be rough without Megan and Charlie until they all got their feet under them again.

But overall, he was right where he wanted to be.

"One thing's for sure," Alan said, looking at him meaningfully. "At least you have good relief pitching."

Charlie looked confused, but Don ignored him for the moment and gave his father a nod. "Yeah, that's for sure." Then he looked back and forth between the two of them, and a slow smile broke over his face. "At home and away."

oooooooooooooooooo


End file.
